A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen

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The day after the election, in an attempt to find some equilibrium, I returned to In Search of Lost Time. The scene I read happened to be one in which Baron de Charlus misreads a social situation and as a result, loses the person he loves most dearly. His error is a familiar one: he doesn’t observe or even suspect the simmering resentment of someone else.
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A Year in Reading: Kaulie Lewis

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The essays are almost meaty, thick with her usual intelligence and insight, quiet and calm on the surface but deep in both feeling and meaning. I couldn’t walk away from these and come back to find them unchanged.
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A Year in Reading: Nick Ripatrazone

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Robinson is the type of writer who makes me want to slow down, sit down, and calm down.
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A Year in Reading: Zoë Ruiz

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In 2017, I want to read books that help further the idea that both whiteness and white dominance are not inevitable, and I want to read books that help me understand how exactly we got to the place that we are in now.
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A Year in Reading: Emily St. John Mandel

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The premise is harrowing, the prose is stark and beautiful, the plotting is impeccable, and there's something utterly heartbreaking in El Akkad's subtle rendition of the ways in which war shapes the human soul.
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A Year in Reading: Mauro Javier Cardenas

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Porpora demonstrates how easy it is for citizens to shirk responsibility for horrendous acts enacted by their government and asks whether the United States became a party to a genocide-like event in Central America (the answer is yes).
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A Year in Reading: Megan Abbott

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These are books that reach their hand out and say: 'This is hard, all of it, but we have to. We have to.'
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A Year in Reading: Jacqueline Woodson

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I will not finish a book I don’t love to the bone. Life is too short. There are far too many good books out there. I’m looking forward to finishing more of the ones I love.
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A Year in Reading: Bich Minh Nguyen

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And with all of this rage and sorrow and longing, there is laughter in these books.
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A Year in Reading: Sally Rooney

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A grim and angry novel to begin a grim and angry year.
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A Year in Reading: Yuri Herrera

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I so liked the character waiting for me when I came home: her litany of complaints, dry humor and self-deprecation, and the weird suspense that fills every day of her life.
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A Year in Reading: Imbolo Mbue

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I love books that devastate me.
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A Year in Reading: Basma Abdel Aziz

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The most striking and painful conclusion, that “the CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees,” is ignored at our peril.
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A Year in Reading: Brandon Shimoda

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It is a masterpiece of synthesizing, and building a tragic narrative out of, the unending cascade of facts and figures by which the United States could be appraised as the slow-boiling terrorist organization that it is.
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A Year in Reading: Teddy Wayne

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Haruf’s modesty and commitment to his craft are worthy of learning from and attempting to emulate, particularly as all of us -- even writers of quiet fiction -- become increasingly expected to brand ourselves like celebrities.
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A Year in Reading: Annie Proulx

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It all ends badly, as it must, in a swirl of cannibalism, baby-switching at birth, contests, and psychiatrists. Oh, how we need Richler today!
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A Year in Reading: Richard Russo

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Say you’re writing a sentence and the noun you’ve chose is “ferocity.” Some writers would let that noun stand on its own, but you decide to intensify it with an adjective. Which one? Well, if you come up with the word “warthog,” then your name is Michael Paterniti and you’re the most talented essayist in the land.
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A Year in Reading: Nicole Dennis-Benn

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McFadden’s prose lingers, giving me courage to stay committed to telling authentic stories that, while revealing of unspeakable truths, serve to unite us all.
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