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Books for Dad on Father's Day

The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond

Looking for a good gift for dad? You know what he wants - a sea kayak, a gas grill, or one of those Segway personal transport devices. But you're too cheap to get him any of those gifts. How about a nice book? Even if he doesn't read it, you can!

Read this: Creative Nonfiction
Contemporary Literature Spotlight10

Long Division by Kiese Laymon

Tuesday June 18, 2013

A meltdown in the "Can You Use That Word in a Sentence" lands City Coldson in Melatchie, Mississippi, the city that also happens to be the setting of a book he's reading entitled Long Division, in which the main character is also a 14-year-old named City Coldson. From there it just gets weirder.

A fusion of magical realism, Southern literature and time-travel, Kiese Laymon's Long Division is a novel like no other and one of the best you'll read this year.

Photo: Agate

Malarky by Anakana Schofield

Monday June 17, 2013

In Anakana Schofield's award-winning debut novel Malarky, Our Woman Philomena has seen her son in an unmentionable act with another man. Red the Twit reveals her infidelities (real or not) with Our Woman's late husband. These twin acts of "something nasty in the woodshed" reverberate throughout the novel but do not bring cold comfort to this farm wife.

Review of Malarky by Anakana Schofield

Photo: Biblioasis

The End by Anders Nilsen

Saturday June 15, 2013

Anders Nilsen's The End was originally published in a staple bound format in 2007 under Fantagrpahics's Ignatz imprint and has been expanded and re-released. With only 80 pages, The End is a quick read but it is hardly fleeting: these pages come from such a raw emotional place that they'll reverberate like an echo from a well.

Review of The End by Anders Nilsen

Also read Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

Photo: Fantagraphics

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Monday June 10, 2013

Anthony Marra's impressive debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena follows a tight network of characters in a rural, war-torn Chechen community as they grow and adapt in the face of great hardship.

Review of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Photo: Hogarth

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