Reading the world from my New York City apartment

I’m back after a summer break that included an unforgettable trip to the Alps, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Before my vacation, I had been looking for a book to help set the scene for me but found it surprisingly hard to find the right one. During the early days of the pandemic, I read Thomas Mann’s early 20th-century novel The Magic Mountain, set in an isolated Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium where the Alps represent a dreamlike escape from reality. It’s a

I’ve taken up something new this summer: swimming lessons. After years of feeling only marginally comfortable in the water, I've decided to try to learn to swim properly – for exercise and, should it ever come to that, for survival. As I work on my breathing and strokes, I’ve also been thinking about why we swim in the first place. On the wall of the JCC on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I take my classes, there’s a quotation from the Talmud that lists things that par

When I visit other countries, I always try to seek out a bookstore. My purchases are usually but not always tied to the place. Years ago in London, I discovered Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, while in Amsterdam I bought a copy of the sci-fi novel The Book of Strange New Things by Dutch-born writer Michel Faber, and in New Zealand, I found An Angel at My Table, an autobiography by one of that country's most famous writers, Janet Frame. On my vacation to Sweden last summer, I

A few months ago, I wrote about my happy discovery of the first installment in the planned seven-book series On the Calculation of Volume. This inventive novel explores the idea of being trapped in time, living the same day over and over. What especially piqued my interest is that this ceaseless day – November 18th – also happens to be my birthday. On the Calculation of Volume, written by Danish author Solvej Balle and beautifully translated by Barbara Haveland, is hard to ca

Last weekend, I traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas for the first time. One highlight was visiting the place where, in 1957, a group of brave Black teenagers attempted to walk through the doors of the all-white Central High School, surrounded by mobs of enraged segregationists. These students, known as the Little Rock Nine, became enduring symbols of the civil rights movement. Little Rock Central High School, now a national historic site run by the National Park Service, remain

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Vladimir Nabokov’s century-old novel Mary and the futility of trying to relive the past. I didn’t plan for this next book to cover similar ground, but the obsession with memory also underpins Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, a contemporary novel set in Southern California. Both stories hinge on a teenage love affair that echoes into adulthood. In each book, it’s clear that the past cannot be recreated. Yet The Mothers, published in 2016, is alt