reads on my radar
Yesterday, I glanced at my virtual bookshelf and I was shocked to learn that I’d only read 12 books in 6 months! What happened to the one-book-a-week gal? The voracious reader who read on subway platforms, in nail salons, whilst making dinner? Well, that girl published a book, took some very necessary breaks, and decided that life wasn’t a race, that books should be savored, discussed and enjoyed. I realized that I’m not on a reading time clock, and while I have to read a great many things for work (proposals, galleys, books and the like), I’m trying desperately to return to long afternoons spent lost in a book, taking my time with it, reading and re-reading chapters.
Yet, clearly this still doesn’t stop me from wanting to devour everything in sight - especially if your friends publish witty, hilarious books or you find yourself borrowing the new Curtis Sittenfeld galley right off your co-worker’s desk. This week, I’m smitten with Ed Park’s Personal Days & Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife. More after the jump.
Last year, I fell shamelessly in love with Joshua Ferris’ very wry, very witty and very moving Then We Came to the End. I had the great privilege of interviewing the author and we chatted about the drone of office life, the dot.com era, whether the office is a surrogate of one’s home, and what’s the deal with Chris Yop and the chair anyway? So it’s with great anticipation that Park’s debut also speaks to the hilarity of the modern-day office (no doubt infused with Park’s terrific sense of humor). Book description from B&N.com:
In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. There’s Pru, the former grad student turned spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety stalks him in his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jack II, who distributes unwanted backrubs–aka “jackrubs”–to his co-workers.
On a Sunday, one of them is called at home. And the Firings begin. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance, this astonishing literary debut is at once a comic delight and a narrative tour de force. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever worked in an office and wondered: “Where does the time go? Where does the life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?”
Definitely one of my highly anticipated summer reads. And after I finish Marguerite Duras’ The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, this is next in the queue.
When I spied Curtis Sittenfeld’s forthcoming novel (on-sale 9.2.08), American Wife, on a colleague’s desk, I begged for a borrow and quickly shoved it in my bag when my kind co-worker acquiesed. I find Sittenfeld’s writing fresh, smart and witty, and I’m quite excited about her latest effort. More to come.
August 22nd, 2008 at 3:20 pm
[…] ok and I’m midway through and loving it. If you don’t recall me prattling on about Curtis Sittenfeld’s compulsively readable and terrifically conceived, American Wife, please join me […]