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December 06, 2017


From The Economist:
In a world where many people look to science to decipher the universe, there is something fascinating, and a bit frightening, about spiritual systems and codes which have commanded passionate loyalty among millions of people for millennia, but which are still impenetrable to outsiders.

From The New York Times (on Lidia Yuknavitch's The Book of Joan):
In this brilliant novel, Earth, circa 2049, has been devastated by global warming and war.

From The New Yorker:
Like any writer worth paying attention to, [Philip] Roth turns out to be the sum of his contradictions.

From Harper's:
People who hear voices but aren’t mentally ill have a superior ability to detect speechlike sounds hidden in noise.

From The Guardian (William Boyd on Best books of 2017):
As a Vladimir Nabokov completist, I could not resist Insomniac Diaries: Experiments with Time (ed. Gennady Barabtarlo, Princeton). Over a period of a few weeks in 1964 Nabokov wrote down his dreams, nightly. Here they are – not random narcoleptic scribblings but direct pellucid access to the great man’s unconscious. Utterly fascinating. Dylan Jones made absolutely the right decision to frame his superb life of David Bowie as a multi-voiced oral biography. David Bowie: A Life (Preface) suits the shape-shifting, beguiling, enigmatic complexities of its subject perfectly. It’s hard to imagine anything that will do Bowie better justice. Patience Gray (1917-2005) is the great original British cook and food writer. Her rackety, reclusive life is brilliantly realised in Fasting and Feasting by Adam Federman (Chelsea Green). This book will establish Gray as a wonderfully eccentric and visionary one-off. She is the British MFK Fisher – there can be no higher praise in literary/culinary circles. 
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