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Books: Reading Non-Fiction

Two of my dearest, smartest friends read no fiction at all. Ever.

Lately I’m drifting into their camp.

I’ve already railed about the grotesque resolution in Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” but it’s worth repeating: I see people carrying that book and think — ugh, just wait. That book that should be wrapped in warning tape.

More recently I struggled through the well-reviewed “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” by Maria Semple. (Curses on certain New York Times reviewers.) Parts are laugh-out-loud funny, but the whole of it seems forced, and tinny. Satire, yes, lunacy, no.

What a relief, then, to pick up some solid nonfiction.

First, a gift from my friend Carl, “Nom de Plume,” by Carmela Ciuraru, sixteen essays about famous authors’ pen names, and why they felt compelled to use them. Ciuraru’s style is so engaging: deeply informative and evocative, never dry. For a lifelong reader and an English major, I was surprised to learn so much about the Bronte sisters’ need for — and triumphs as –  male authors. This author set me firmly in the high /low, bisexual, cross-dressing world of  Georges Sand. I knew a lot about “Alice in Wonderland’s” Lewis Carroll, but it’s worth spending time with him in Ciuraru’s hands.

Another work of nonfiction I’m enjoying is Richard Seaver’s “The Tender Hour of Twilight, Paris in the ‘50s, New York in the ’60’s: A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age.” You had me at hello with this one: Paris, New York, publishing.

Seaver lived his life (1926 -2009) in literature, publishing French authors for English readers. Later, in New York, he bucked U.S. censors to publish D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” and other banned books.

This is a slow, rich, naughty read. I am besotted by his Paris. Seaver can spend pages describing a garret, or a meal; he never bores.

Also in the blog

Why do we give authors second chances? Once burned, why invest again? Because books, and their creators, are like lovers: we may have parted but we want to recall the initial attraction. Rose Tremain’s “The Road Home” disappointed. It was so predictable: an immigrant comes to London, sleeps in a corner, lucks into better and

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Publicists regularly ask me to read and review books. I rarely bite. When I do, I typically gobble it up. That’s how I consumed Ronald Gruner’s Covid Wars, America’s Struggle Over Public Health and Personal Freedom. It’s a page turner, with helpful graphics. It’s been five years since the first days of the pandemic, and

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Unexpected book grief. Ian McEwan’s “Solar” is that rare thing: a wickedly funny satire about science featuring a wholly unlikeable main character. I loved every page of it. When we first meet Michael Beard he’s 53 and fat, a Nobel-prize winning physicist riding the high-fee, high-calorie lecture circuit. His (fifth!) marriage is in shambles and

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