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Each of these stories contains the minute details of an unsettling world -- a world, perhaps, where a stray cat grows to man-size, or a dead woman is trapped in limbo, or a young woman discovers the secret to eternal life. ... (continued)

This was a Bamako book club pick. Here's what I wrote up after our discussion: The first thing everyone wanted to talk about, and a subject we returned to frequently over the course of the evening, was the historical nonfiction... ... (continued)

E gave me this one for Christmas and I read it aloud on our drives to and from Michigan, half on the way up, half on the way back. A great book, and a great one for reading aloud: Not... ... (continued)

This book was different the second time I read it. Less enchanting -- perhaps because I knew how it would end. ... (continued)

I suppose this is fiction, but it reads more like a series of unusual essays. ... (continued)

I was born just before the final Apollo mission (17) in 1972. After that, nothing much happened (well, nothing except Skylab) until the first shuttle went up in 1981 ... ... (continued)

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I just read Didion's essay "The White Album" for the first time (in the anthology of The Best American Essays of the Century), then I came back to this book, which I had never finished, and I reread the title... ... (continued)

I found this book especially interesting as a contemporary expatriate. Forster asks whether colonists and the colonized can be friends on equal terms. The book (written in 1924, mind) answers: "and then," [Aziz] concluded, half kissing him, "you and I... ... (continued)

I told a friend: "I both looked forward to this book's publication, having read an excerpt of it in the New Yorker debut fiction issue a couple years ago, and dreaded it, because it's another brilliant debut by a young... ... (continued)

I might never have found my new favorite book, T. Coraghessan Boyle's Water Music, if not for the friend who recommended it (thanks M.Co!). Unfortunately, Eric got to it first and I was forced to endure much snickering and chuckling... ... (continued)

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When I began reading Anna Karenina this year, for the third or fourth time, I was determined to finish it, even if it required dogged perseverance to get through all 800+ pages. The new translation (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)... ... (continued)

This book was half of a gift (its companion was Donna Tartt's The Little Friend). I loved both. In Middlesex, the author of the Virgin Suicides returns years later with a mammoth novel that spans the 20th century; ranges from... ... (continued)

If you're wondering if it's good -- oh, it's good. How good is it? I finished it three days ago. I'm not ready to loan it to anyone yet because I just want it near me. I can't start reading... ... (continued)

The totally riveting memoir of a girlhood spent on farms in central and east Africa. Eric selected this for me based on a review in the Economist. Its episodes are beautifully composed of vivid scenes. I wish I learned more... ... (continued)

I finished this book in the afternoon and watched the Ang Lee movie for the first time that night. In such close succession, I was hyperaware of the way the movie followed the same high-level structure as the book, but... ... (continued)

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Have you seen people on the subway, on the plane, reading this book? That's because it's EXCELLENT. A brief, momentarily beautiful, ultimately sad tale of hostages and their captors, and the living, mysterious bond that the rest of us know... ... (continued)

A gift from E. after our most recent conversation about vegetarianism. It's full of alarming information, but never alarmist, and thankfully Schlosser wraps up with a concise list of things that need to change. (How to change things? Vote with... ... (continued)

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