What Birnbaum's Reading

Human Smoke by Nick Baker, The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell, Alan Furst's The Spy of Warsaw, Havana Deco, Jim Kunstler's The World Made by Hand, Love Letters from a Fat Man by Naomi Benaron, The Lazarus Project by Alexander Hemon, and I am trying to make space to get back to reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Bolano's The Savage Detectives, and Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

-Robert Birnbaum, editor-at-large

The World Without Us

I just finished Veronica by Mary Gaitskill. I also went to my community library for the first time since I was fourteen the other night, and I picked up The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (which I started reading last night and am already glued to), The Control of Nature by John McPhee and The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. Also, I have the new translation of War and Peace next to my night stand, which I imagine will take me through to June!

-Alexandra Tursi, visuals editor

Shortcomings

This month I'm reading Shortcomings by Adrien Tomine, Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body by Jennifer Ackerman, and Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison.

-Stephanie Johnson, copyeditor

A Civil Action

I just finished A Civil Action by Jonathon Harr, a masterly piece of research, reporting, and narrative. I recently picked up Among the Thugs by Bill Buford at a tiny used bookstore. Last I night finished Marilynne Robinson's "The Waste Land," a sharp, short piece published in an early issue of Granta and reprinted in The Granta Book of Reportage, and "The War at Home," Janet Wondra's lovely contribution to Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, edited by Judith Kitchen.

-Mara Naselli, nonfiction editor

Lee Miller: A Life

My big project lately has been another fascinating lady bio, Carolyn Burke's Lee Miller: A Life.

Earlier this month I was introduced to Kate Christensen by randomly coming across her novel, The Epicure's Lament, in the library. Its protagonist, a wry hedonist suddenly forced into family-life, has stayed with me in a very pleasant way, which I bet would really piss him off.

Also this month I have been making slow progress on Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom, which, in my opinion, is the only kind of Faulkner progress allowed, given that lines like the following tend to appear casually on every page:

"War would settle the matter, leave free one of the two irreconciliables, since it would not be the first time that youth has taken catastrophe as a direct act of Providence for the sole purpose of solving a personal problem which youth itself could not solve."

-Alexandra Bullen, interviews editor

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

Greetings from Chicago everyone, it's your friendly roving nonfiction acquisitions editor, Alex A.G. Shapiro. I'm reading My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro by Jeffrey Eugenides (Editor), and a business book called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath, Dan Heath. On deck is Charles Bock's much ballyhooed debut, Beautiful Children.

-Alex Shapiro, contributing editor

On the Art of Life and Vice Versa

Today I started reading Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa and I've liked it so much that I've more or less finished it in an afternoon. I just finished the short story collection Stories from the Afterlife, by Quinn Dalton, and up next is Gail Jones' Dreams of Speaking to prepare for interviewing the author. I just finished Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist and Umberto Eco's On Literature. Last but not least, I've been slowly but happily reading Inscribing the Hundred Years War in French and English Cultures--getting back to my Medieval Studies-major roots.

-Summer Block Kumar, contributing editor

The Audacity of Hoping to Read Five Books This Month

My reading list this month includes the two Obama books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, both of which I purchased during a random trip to Dartmouth and am very excited to take in.

I'm also looking forward to our man Christian Bauman's third novel, In Hoboken, a new release from Melville House Publishing.

Harry, Revised, the first book from lit blogger Mark Sarvas, is also on the list.

Finally, I can't wait to read Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, the latest from Identity Theory interviewee Mary Roach.

-Matt Borondy, founding editor