Once again, my idea of reading more non-fiction this year didn't materialize. During Non-Fiction November, so many people were actually reading books that I have been meaning to read but I picked up a novel or collection instead. Nonetheless, I've squeezed in a few. Julia Shaw's The Memory Illusion (2016) Memory
“There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.” HarperCollins, 2016 That might not come up in math class at school, but it's evident on every page of Hidden Figures. "What I wanted was for
Many writers suggest that a motivation for telling stories is to set things in order, to make sense of what seems senseless. Little wonder that so many novels are preoccupied with loss and absence, abandonment and grief. In Melanie Mah's The Sweetest One, Chris (Chrysler) Wong thinks maybe she's cursed.
It's not all "Reader, I married him" but plenty of contemporary novels are preoccupied by the idea of storytelling, and often one voice does speak to us directly even now. Periscope Books, 2016 In Tabish Khair's Just Another Jihadi Jane, the storyteller's direct address appears regularly and spiritedly.
This month, I'm wholly enjoying the stories in the Short Story Advent Calendar (edited by Michael Hingston and designed by Natalie Olsen). The variety of the boxed set is fantastic, especially if you're looking for "new" short story writers to follow, but I generally read collections of works by a single
