Forum / Best Just Read

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  MaryAnne Kolton

  Sep 15, 04:13pm

  Just finished "The Astral: a novel" by Kate Christensen. Darkly funny, intelligent, heartbreaking. Her prose is so delicious it melts into your consciousness. . .

  Also "The Submission" by Amy Waldman. A most interesting concept, considering the times. An opportunity to see brilliance and stubborness in action.

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  Joani Reese

  Sep 15, 08:01pm

  Three relatively new books come immediately to mind: Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and Andre Dubus III's memoir Townie. I read all these in the last few months, each one excellent in its own way.

  The finest book I've read in years that I came to (admittedly) very late is Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. I can't think of another novel in its class, although Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening of Redness in the West comes closest. They both seemed to me to be elegant, novel length prose poems and were a joy to read, and I will seek them out over and over again to appreciate what writing truly can accomplish when filtered through the minds of masters.

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