Recommended Reading List: February, 2023

Chronic illness flared—well, actually announced its presence quite dramatically—so I was sick for a week, which put me behind on almost everything. I got a lot of reading done, including some that I was supposed to do, but did not write up the Recommended Reading List at all. Then I did other things to cope with being behind, and this was the one thing I […]

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Recommended Reading List: January 2023

I taught a workshop, and spent a lot of January reading stories in manuscript. (I still have a lot to go because of a stupidly busy February.) I ended up reading a novel that was awful. The writing was good; the situation implausible; the characters all dumber than rocks. But I couldn’t figure out how this traditionally published author got to his ending. So I […]

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Recommended Reading List: November 2022

I sat down to add something to this list, and realized I hadn’t started it. I had just set my books aside. Whoops. I thought I’d been keeping up all month. Such a surprise. What I sat down to add was a bit about The Best American Essays 2022. I love these volumes, as you know, but I had to set this year’s aside. It’s […]

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Recommended Reading List: May, 2022

Well, May was super busy, with finals and a workshop that I was teaching and the Licensing Expo. I got behind writing up the recommended reading, and then I got sick in the first part of June, so I couldn’t finish this. I did manage to read a startling amount, though, considering I was also reading manuscripts and I was gone much of the time. […]

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Recommended Reading List: August, 2021

I threw out a book of essays in August. I mean literally tossed the book in the trash. The book was considered one of the best books of 2019 by a whole bunch of mainstream literary reviewers, all of whom are on my suspect list now. The book is exceedingly well written. The author writes about all the awful things she’s seen in her life…and […]

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Recommended Reading List: July 2020

I’ve been line editing various editing projects, which are in their final stages, so my reading time is limited. I had a weird experience, though. I read a book that I hoped would get me into a new series, and a week later, I couldn’t remember what I had read. In fact, I was wondering why I had nothing to talk about here, before recalling […]

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Recommended Reading List: November, 2019

This month vanished almost instantly. Busy almost every night from the beginning of the month to the 15th, which cut into my reading time dramatically. But things slowed mid-month so I was able to read many good things. If you want to see the kinds of things that can eat into my leisure reading time, then look no farther than the Winter Holiday Spectacular, which […]

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Recommended Reading List: May 2019

May started much better than any other month in 2019. I carved out some time late in the day to get reading done, even if I hadn’t finished my email or any of the other work I had. I was really feeling the lack of leisure reading time and it was starting to have an impact on my writing. Lots of good reading this month, […]

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Recommended Reading List: July, 2018

I turned off the TV much of the month, and decreased my consumption of news, out of necessity. I can’t watch the images of my country doing things I so deeply hate. I do read about these things on my phone (thank heavens for notifications!) so I’m not uninformed. I’m just not losing myself in the imagery, which is probably good for my mental health. […]

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Recommended Reading List: February 2018

I’d like to say I had no time for leisure reading this month, and while that’s mostly true, it doesn’t feel true. I spent most of the month reading for the anthology workshop. 1.2 million words of really great fiction, some of which will appear in upcoming Fiction Rivers. I mentioned the Justice issue of Fiction River last month. This month, I line-edited another Fiction […]

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