"Aboriginal" by Willie Lin

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Like guillotines, every lesson from childhood
taught me about precision and punishment. . . .

"Aboriginal," a poem by Willie Lin, was published on November 16, 2010, and is continued online in Linebreak.

Collections of short stories and novellas, and a poem

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No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July (Scribner, 2007).

(If you visit the website for the book, look for the tiny pink arrows at the bottom right of each page. The site is quirky, just like her writing.)

She does occasionally go off in a direction I don't love, but she's such an interesting writer. A few of my favorites:

"The Man on the Stairs" (originally published in Fence): "The man on the stairs pauses for such incredibly long periods of time, I almost wonder if he is having a problem. Like maybe he's disabled or very old. Or maybe just really tired. Maybe he's already killed everyone else on the block and now he's all worn out." (pp. 36-37)

"Something That Needs Nothing" (published in Bridge, The New Yorker, and My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I blogged about here).

"The Boy from Lam Kien" (published by Cloverfield Press)

"Birthmark" (published in The Paris Review, Spring 2003)

"How to Tell Stories to Children"

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Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror, a collection of three novellas by James Hynes (Picador USA, 1997).
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"Across a Great Wilderness Without You" by Keetje Kuipers, probably my favorite poem from her collection Beautiful in the Mouth (BOA Editions, 2010). "Across a Great Wilderness Without You" first appeared in 42opus and on p. 36 of Beautiful. (I think it goes without saying that I also liked "At Stanfield Reservoir and Wildlife Preserve," which first appeared in the Apple Valley Review and is on pp. 44-45 of the book.)

The Fall 2010 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2010 issue of the journal features poetry by Alana Ruprecht, Laura Merleau, Bernard Henrie, Chris Anderson, Laura Drell, M.J. Iuppa, Karen Schubert, and Margaret Rozga; prose poetry by Sarah Frost; fiction by William Grigg and Kimberly Long Cockroft; and artwork by Mary Erickson.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

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Angela's Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt (Scribner: New York, 1996).

Wrenching, but also funny and poignant and, at times, quite beautiful.

Unaccustomed Earth

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Jhumpa Lahiri's second collection of short stories is just phenomenal.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008).

A short story collection and a novel

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"An hour later, a couple lingered in front of a death mask that cost several hundred dollars. They both wore shorts and sandals and carried mesh tote bags. They spoke in a foreign language; the man kept touching the space between the woman's shoulders. Joyce watched them from behind the register. They were young, early twenties, and looked happy. She both envied and pitied them."

This segment is from "We Are Calling to Offer You a Fabulous Life," a short story by Laura van den Berg. It was first published in the Northwest Review and then in her first book, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009). The story collection also includes the title story (first printed in One Story), which I discussed in a previous post, and "Where We Must Be," about a failed actress who takes a job pretending to be Bigfoot.

I also recently read Jhumpa Lahiri's first published novel, The Namesake (Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

The Reader

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I read this novel (by Bernhard Schlink) many years ago, but I just watched the film a few days ago. The novel is an intelligent rendering of issues that are quite complicated, especially in a moral sense. Although I haven't read it again in the intervening years, I thought that the film captured the sense of the book quite well. I was particularly impressed with David Kross, who played the younger Michael.

The Reader, based on the novel The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, directed by Stephen Daldry, written for the screen by David Hare, and starring Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz, David Kross as a younger Michael Berg, and Ralph Fiennes as an older Michael Berg.