1.) I’m rereading Laura Miller’s The Magician’s Book, a book that’s part literary criticism, part child psychology, part memoir about loving sff books as a child. I read this book for the first time 3 years ago and have recommended it to or bought it for dozens of fellow book nerds since—I especially recommend it to anyone who was obsessed with fantasy and science fiction as a child (or, cough, still is). I started rereading in preparation for the Laura Miller/Jean-Christophe Valtat event at BookCourt last night. (Well, tonight, Thursday, but by the time you post this it will have been last night. I really hope I get to touch her hand and don’t drool on her by accident.)

-Juliet Grames, Senior Editor

2.) I’m reading the very pretty Lucky #13 issue of Hobart. It’s about luck. See? Amelia Gray and Tod Goldberg have stories next to each other, which I’m still trying to assign some significance to other than that these are both writers whose names I know and whose various writings I have enjoyed. Adam Levin also has a story with the line “I’d get so angry, and want to slap him on the goiter, or squeeze him roughly on the goiter…” Neat.

-Rudy Martinez, Marketeer

3.) I’m still reading American Wife! (I’ve been working on revisions of my own book, so haven’t had as much reading time this week…)

-Bronwen Hruska, Publisher

4.) Reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. Which should really be called “The Biography of Gertrude Stein.” But creative life in 1920-30s Paris just doesn’t get old.

-Simona Blat, Editorial Assistant

5.) I’m re-reading the YA historical novel A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. I can’t say too many good things about this story, based in 1906 upstate New York, and the tough, bookish heroine Mattie Gokey. It’s such a fun book to read, espeically since Mattie learns a word a day from her precious dictionary! My favorites? Sesquipedalian, obstreperous and fugacious.

-Katie Hoffman, Editorial Assistant

6.) When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro. A London detective named Christopher Banks returns to Shanghai, where he spent his childhood until the mysterious disappearance of his parents. Starts in the spare, ruminative mode of The Remains of the Day, then, in Shanghai, moves into a far wilder space, familiar to readers of The Unconsoled, where the narrator’s memories seem strangely mapped over a city—in this case, a city at war. The opening sections feel a bit thinner than the very best Ishiguro, but only slightly (and that’s a very high standard); this is a brilliant, challenging, beautiful and deeply weird novel.

An early quote I love: “‘Of course,’ he said eventually, ‘a lot of young men dream of becoming detectives. I dare say I did once, in my more fanciful moments. One feels so idealistic at your age. Longs to be the great detective of the day. To root out singlehandedly all the evil in the world. Commendable. But really, my boy, it’s just as well to have, let us say, a few other strings to your bow.’”

-Mark Doten, Editor

7.) I’m reading The Loser by Thomas Bernhard. It’s about two men who go to piano conservatory with the virtuoso Glenn Gould, the genius of whom changes their lives and makes them confront their own inferiority.

-PJ Horoszko, Intern

What are you reading? Let us know!