Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New and Selected Poems, edited by Karen Van Dyck, translated from the Greek (Saint Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2009) (From "Lipu": " 'The good thing about desire / is that when it disappears / the value of the desired object / disappears too.' " Id. at 97, 97-98).
Amanda Coe, What They Do In the Dark: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2012).
Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire (New York: Scholastic Press, 2009).
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic Press, 2008).
Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay (New York: Scholastic Press, 2010).
Amber Dermont, The Starboard Sea: A Novel (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2012) (See Eleanor Henderson, "In Knots," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/4/2012.).
Natalie Dykstra, Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) (See Brenda Wineapple, "The Missing Pages," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/4/2012).
Paula Fox, Desperate Characters, with an introduction by Jonathan Franzen (New York & London: W. W. Norton, 1970, 1999).
Paula Fox, Desperate Characters, with an introduction by Jonathan Franzen (New York & London: W. W. Norton, 1970, 1999).
Venus Khoury-Ghata, A House at the Edge of Tears, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker (Saint Paul. MN: Graywolf Press, 2005) (From the backcover: "In the city of Beirut, five shabby dwellings circle a courtyard with a pomegranate tree weeping blood red fruit. The residents hear screams in the night as a boy is beaten by his father--a punishment for masturbating in his sleep. A crime not worthy of the punishment: the neighbors gossip and decide that he must have tried to rape his sisters. The poems he writes are perhaps an even greater crime to his father, but ultimately a gift to his eldest sister, who narrates their story with a combination of brutal truth and stunning prose.").
Venus Khoury-Ghata, She Says, translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker (Saint Paul. MN: Graywolf Press, 2001, 2003) (poems).
Liz Moore, Heft: A Novel (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012) ("I have always loved aggrieved & unbeautiful women. I have always loved beautiful women too, but it is the unbeautiful ones that haunt me & find me & abide, whose images I see before me when I go to sleep." Id. at 319.).
Toni Morrison, Home: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012) (See Christopher Benfey, "Ghosts in the twilight," NYRB, 7/12/2012; and Leah Hager Cohen, "Point of Return," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/20/2012).
Toni Morrison, Home: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012) (See Christopher Benfey, "Ghosts in the twilight," NYRB, 7/12/2012; and Leah Hager Cohen, "Point of Return," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/20/2012).
Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012).
Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth: A Novel (New York: Free Press, 2011) (See Andrea Thompson, "Peaks," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/3/2012.).
Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth: A Novel (New York: Free Press, 2011) (See Andrea Thompson, "Peaks," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/3/2012.).
Anne Tyler, The Beginner's Goodbye: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012) (I don't know why--though, perhaps, it is all those painted-toed women at yoga/asanas class--, but this passage made be laugh. "Danika was our designer, the designer preceding Irene. My father had hired her as his final act before handing over the business, and all at once I thought I saw why. I said, 'Danika! She wears toenail polish!' 'What's wrong with that?' my mother asked. 'I always feel uneasy about women who polish their toenails. It makes me wonder what they're hiding.' " Id. at 121. Also see, Joyce Carol Oates, "The Ghost of Desire," NYRB, 6/7/2012.).
Ellen Ullman, The Bug: A Novel (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
Ellen Ullman, The Bug: A Novel (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
Ellen Ullman, By Blood: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012) (See Parul Sehgal, "Secret Hearer," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/26/2012).
Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents (San Francisco: City Lights Books 1997) ("The relationship between person and machine is completely reversed on the Internet. The Net is the knowledge repository, and the user can only search it." "The same could be said of a library, except the libraries have something the Internet considers nearly anathema: librarians. The current reigning ideology of the Internet is strictly opposed to the idea of a librarian's overriding sensibility, opting instead for the notion that anything, in and of itself, is worthy content. So it is entirely up to the end user to distinguish junk from literature. Hence the rapid proliferation of search engines. It is interesting to note that, over time, the search engines themselves are beginning to incorporate biases and strategies that could be characterized as ordering sensibilities. However, these strategies are not in the public domain, in a sense making each search engine a private card catalog, a personal collection." Id. at 78. From the backcover: "Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where 'weird logic dreamers' like herself live 'close to the machine.' Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love, and the need to communicate face to face don't easily fit into lines of code or clicks in a Web browser. At every turn, she finds she cannot ignore the social and philosophical repercussion of her work. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyberculture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation--it is the vulnerable creation of people who are not so sure of just where they're taking us all.").
Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011) (See Parul Sehgal, "The Wind and the Rain," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/1/2012).
Ellen Ullman, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents (San Francisco: City Lights Books 1997) ("The relationship between person and machine is completely reversed on the Internet. The Net is the knowledge repository, and the user can only search it." "The same could be said of a library, except the libraries have something the Internet considers nearly anathema: librarians. The current reigning ideology of the Internet is strictly opposed to the idea of a librarian's overriding sensibility, opting instead for the notion that anything, in and of itself, is worthy content. So it is entirely up to the end user to distinguish junk from literature. Hence the rapid proliferation of search engines. It is interesting to note that, over time, the search engines themselves are beginning to incorporate biases and strategies that could be characterized as ordering sensibilities. However, these strategies are not in the public domain, in a sense making each search engine a private card catalog, a personal collection." Id. at 78. From the backcover: "Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where 'weird logic dreamers' like herself live 'close to the machine.' Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love, and the need to communicate face to face don't easily fit into lines of code or clicks in a Web browser. At every turn, she finds she cannot ignore the social and philosophical repercussion of her work. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyberculture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation--it is the vulnerable creation of people who are not so sure of just where they're taking us all.").
Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011) (See Parul Sehgal, "The Wind and the Rain," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/1/2012).
Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (New York: Grove Press, 2011) ("I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me." "So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn't be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language--and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers--a language powerful enough to say how it is." "It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place." Id. at 40. "I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left." "I did not know that Thatcherism would fund its economic miracle by selling off all our nationalised assets and industries." "I did not realise the consequences of privatising society." Id. at 140. Also see Kathryn Harrison, "Mummy Dearest," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/25/2012; and Joyce Carol Oates, "In a Panic About Love," NYRB, 5/24/2012.).
