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How H.G. Wells Predicted the 20th Century

…Herbert George Wells (1866-1946), a towering genius successful in many genres, knew, influenced or was admired by virtually every major writer and thinker of his time, between the publication of his first novel, “The Time Machine,” in 1895 and the end of World War II. Read more

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The Library: A Fragile History

Despite its subtitle, this history of libraries is anything but fragile. At more than 500 pages, it is a robust, near definitive effort, tracing the evolution of the institution from the clay tablets of the Assyrian Empire to the wired libraries of today … Much of this material is familiar, though in a welcome way, comprehensive like the rest of the authors’ admirable effort. Though its primary audience will likely be academics, the book is so accessible and well written that it may also find a general readership among all those who love libraries. May their numbers be legion. Read more

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The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

“…a scintillating story about a motley group of Native American booksellers haunted by the spirit of a customer … More than a gripping ghost story, this offers profound insights into the effects of the global pandemic and the collateral damage of systemic racism. It adds up to one of Erdrich’s most sprawling and illuminating works to date. Read more

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Gary Shteyngart’s Pandemic Novel Is His Finest Yet

To read this novel is to tally a high school yearbook’s worth of superlatives for Shteyngart: funniest, noisiest, sweetest, most entertaining. To those I will add a few superlatives that were not celebrated at my own high school: most melancholic, most quizzical, most skilled at vibrating the deepest strings of the anthropoid heart. Read more

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An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helene Tursten

Tursten effectively juxtaposes a cozy, Agatha Christie–like tone against the often surprisingly dark nature of Maud’s recollections, which are rife with clever satirical jabs and delicious ironies. This absorbing dive into the mind of a ruthless pragmatist posing as a Swedish Miss Marple will please psychological-thriller fans, once they realize that Maud isn’t nearly as cozy as she looks. Read more 

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How Oscar Wilde evolved from poet and playwright to symbol of martyrdom and individualism

Oscar Wilde’s birthday is Oct. 16 — he was born on that day in 1854 — and there’s a simple way to both celebrate it and give yourself a present: Pick up a copy of “Oscar Wilde: A Life,” by Matthew Sturgis, an authority on the 1890s whose previous works focused on the artists Walter Sickert and Aubrey Beardsley. Without supplanting Richard Ellmann’s beautifully written “Oscar Wilde” — which a young reviewer bearing my name enthusiastically reviewed in 1988 — Sturgis’s biography is now the fullest one-volume account of the iconic fin-de-siècle writer, aesthete, wit and gay martyr. Read more

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I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins

In the spirit of Edward Abbey, Hunter Thompson, and Joy Williams, Watkins has forged a desert tale of howling pain and a chaotic quest for healing mythic in its summoning of female power in a realm of double-wides, loaded dice, broken glass, and hot springs. Read more

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A Chinese Classic Journeys to the West: Julia Lovell’s Translation of “Monkey King”

EXCEPT FOR THE one error I spotted on its cover, Julia Lovell’s new translation of Monkey King: Journey to the West is the best English edition of the classic Chinese fantasy novel, Xi You Ji (literally “west journey record”), I have ever read. If you wish to understand why Monkey King has been a fixture in Chinese popular culture for no fewer than five centuries, then look no further. Pick up this edition and you will join the 1.5 billion people who, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman’s comment on the tale, share in their DNA an intimate knowledge of the havoc-wreaking Monkey’s herculean journey westward to find a special collection of Buddhist sutras in India. Read more

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