My reading list for March includes three in-progress books that I talked about in yesterday's post:
→ RED MARS
by Kim Stanley Robinson
→ INVINCIBLE SUMMER
by Hannah Moskowitz
→ THREE BAGS FULL
by Leonie Swann
Joining these are two more:
→ THE LOVER'S DICTIONARY
by David Levithan - This is a novel in the form of dictionary entries. When I first heard the concept, it sounded like too artificial a gimmick even for gimmick-loving me. But after listening to Levithan discuss the book and read excerpts on Bookworm, I changed my mind. He's made this gimmick work. The words and their definitions are unexpected. The entries appear in alphabetical order, but not chronological order, so by reading the dictionary, the reader gradually assembles the complete story of a troubled relationship. I heard a longer excerpt on The Writer's Block, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.
→ THE REPORT
by Jessica Francis Kane - I read an interview at Beyond the Margins and was intrigued. Kane's novel speculates on the story behind a real incident during World War II that resulted in 173 civilian deaths but was never explained. Rereading the interview, I notice another element of interest that I'd forgotten: the novel has storylines set thirty years apart, just like mine.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Jason Black concludes an insightful three-part series on establishing characters
→ GalleyCat discovers a
WAITING FOR GODOT video game.
2 comments:
The concept for THE LOVER'S DICTIONARY reminds me of the memoir ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AN ORDINARY LIFE, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I haven't read it, but I heard her talk about it on The Sound of Young America: The College Years recently (a podcast that I have only checked out that once), and I was intrigued. Ira Glass apparently told her she needed more organization/structure for her stories, and an encyclopedic format is where she ended up. I liked the excerpts she read, and I like the illustrations on the Amazon page, so perhaps I will eventually read it.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AN ORDINARY LIFE does indeed sound very interesting!
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