books | The Smart Set

1984 in 2024

Matt Hanson — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 11:30:00 +0000

Like existentialism, surreal, and (sorry, Alanis Morisette) ironic, the term “Orwellian” is ubiquitous and often misused. It’s typically applied to government surveillance or totalitarianism in general. This is understandable, given that British author Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name, George Orwell, is likely best known for his novel 1984, which generations of […]

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Saudade for Library Book Sales

Bernadette Geyer — Thu, 02 May 2024 11:30:00 +0000

In Berlin, Germany, there is no such thing as a library book sale. This is a reality I have had to come to terms with over the past 10 years. A library might have a small bin of sale books near the checkout desk, but certainly nothing compared to the annual tradition at many libraries […]

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In Search of Proust’s Genius

Paula Marantz Cohen — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 12:30:00 +0000

Can a work of art be deeply flawed and still be great? One of the reasons that some once-revered works in the Western canon have been treated so shabbily in recent years is that, once a new lens is introduced that illuminates their flaws, critics have been exceptionally severe. But great things need a certain […]

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The Last Emperor

Balu George — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 11:30:00 +0000

The boy of 11 is at a book fair. School is out in Cochin, India, and he has dragged his father along to the book fair in the city. In two days’ time, the family is going on vacation to Ahmednagar, where his father’s elder brother stays. The uncle works in a sugar factory there, […]

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My Sister’s Bookshelf

Chris Orlet — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Throughout the long-gone days of my childhood a thick, worn paperback sat on top of the lid of the tank of our upstairs toilet. Wilt, a biography of Wilt Chamberlain, the Hall of Fame center for the Los Angeles Lakers. My father had checked out the book on the only trip he ever took as […]

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The Locus

Thomas Leclair — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 11:30:00 +0000

In Nathanael West’s Hollywood novel, Day of the Locust, the protagonist believes the people he observes “come to California to die.” I came at age 78 to live. After 12 years in Brooklyn, I had spent tenuous parts of the last two years in Athens, Warsaw, and London. In those cities, I had two problems that […]

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An Ode to Perfume Strips

Rhoda Feng — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 10:40:00 +0000

Does reading leave a residue? Whenever I’ve accumulated a stash of glossy magazines, I like to make strips from the perfume samples embedded in their pages. These I will turn into bookmarks, which will turn me into a voracious consumer of words. That, at least, is the promise contained in voluptuous notes of sunny daffodil […]

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The Inner Voice of Books

John Capista — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 17:41:00 +0000

In the tangled web of my teenage years, farther back than I care to admit, I had the uncanny ability of always knowing what was best for me. Or so I thought. When my parents told me it wasn’t unreasonable for them to expect me home by midnight after a night out with friends, I […]

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The Status of the Book in the Age of Digital Media

Paula Marantz Cohen — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:03:14 +0000

Park Avenue was festooned with tulips as we looked for parking on our way to the 62nd annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair. The Fair was being held this spring, as it is every spring, at the Armory, a neo-Gothic structure that once housed the so-called “Silk Stocking” Seventh Regiment, owing to its location […]

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May it Be So

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 11:30:00 +0000

Months after I move from my apartment to this ranch house in upstate New York, I find my favorite frying pan boxed beneath a pile of winter boots, but where is my Pablo Neruda with the coffee stain on his odes? Where is my dog-eared Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler that brings me into the maelstrom […]

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