#maureen corrigan

[macrolit]

I live an intensely bookish life during a resolutely nonliterary era.

Maureen Corrigan (1955 - present) literature professor, author and essayist

[backlogbooks]

this book was slow in moments but it did remind me of my high school desire to get a great gatsby tattoo (it was going to be part of the last lines of the novel, either ending with “And one fine morning—“ or only that part, for the record)

[favbookshelf]

It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others, there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.

- Maureen Corrigan

Source: @chanelbagsandcigarettedrags

[literarymedicine]

— Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone: I’m Reading

[godzilla-reads]

“It’s not that I don’t like people. It’s just that when I’m in the company of others – even my nearest and dearest – there always comes a moment when I’d rather be reading a book.”

– Maureen Corrigan

[Today is reserved for taking care of my plants and reading.]

[bookaddict24-7]

It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan

[universitybookstore]

New from W. W. Norton and historian Yuval Taylor, Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal. (Listen to the review on NPR’s Fresh Air here.)

[nprfreshair]

Maureen Corrigan’s Top 10 Books of 2018

1) The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai My pick for “Novel of the Year.” Makkai fills this sweeping story about the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and its long numb aftermath with vivid characters; absorbing questions about art, belief, and transcendence; and most improbably, lots of wit.

2) Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart Shteyngart dusts off our most hallowed literary trope--the on-the-road novel--and takes it for a satirical spin through an America on the verge of a Trump presidency.

3) There There by Tommy Orange Orange’s inspired debut novel is set in Oakland, California and delves into the lives of urban Native Americans. The ten page Prologue—which riffs on some five hundred years of Native People’s history—is alone worth the price of this book.

4) Warlight by Michael Ondaatje A mysterious tale about two children abandoned to the care of a stranger in the postwar London of 1945. At this point in Ondaatje’s celebrated career it’s almost unnecessary for me to say that his writing is gorgeous; his story haunting.

5) Washington Black by Esi Edugyan Opening on a sugar plantation in Barbados in 1830, this novel is narrated by an enslaved eleven-year-old boy, known as “Wash.” Wash escapes from that plantation—via hot air balloon, no less!—and Edugyan herself breaks away from the conventional, transporting readers into the giddy realms of Romantic travelogue and scientific exploration.

6) The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson When Johnson wrote at reckless full force, as he does in many of the stories in this posthumous short story collection, his words blasted barriers, discovering those odd places where, as one of his narrators here says, “the Mystery winks at you.” (15)

7) Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston This lost treasure of a book was crafted out of interviews Hurston did in Alabama in 1927 with 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis, the last known living person who could recount first-hand the experience of being captured in Africa and transported on a slave ship to the United States. Barracoon dramatizes two extraordinary voices in conversation.

8) I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara McNamara was midway into writing an account of a serial predator she dubbed “The Golden State Killer” when she died in her sleep at age 46. Colleagues drew on her research to complete this book, which is not only a great true-crime narrative, but also a nuanced investigation into McNamara’s own preoccupation with the case. (Note: A suspect was arrested this spring, a couple of months after McNamara’s book was published.)

9) Sharp by Michelle Dean Sharp is an entertaining and erudite cultural history of ten women who became critics and public intellectuals even though, as Dean says, “they came up in a world that was not eager to hear women’s opinions about anything.” (ix) Dean’s subjects include Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McCarthy, Pauline Kael, and the immortal Dorothy Parker.

10) Heartland by Sarah Smarsh This debut memoir is one of the smartest books about class in America that I’ve read. Smarsh hails from the white rural working class and she writes about politics, race, cooking with Crisco, and class contempt with a lyrical boldness.