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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 1 post · 41 views
By Lynn · 1 post · 41 views
last updated Jun 20, 2025 08:37AM
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The Schedule July through December 2019
By Sherry , Doyenne · 1 post · 53 views
By Sherry , Doyenne · 1 post · 53 views
last updated May 13, 2019 06:03AM
"The Earthquake in Chile" by Heinrich von Kleist
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By Barbara · 10 posts · 9 views
last updated Sep 08, 2019 01:37PM
What I'm Reading September/October 2019
By Lynn · 195 posts · 52 views
last updated Nov 04, 2019 07:24AM
What Members Thought
Nov 06, 2018
Jenny (Reading Envy)
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
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The Friend by Sigrid Nunez is a finalist for the National Book Award. I first heard about it from Nadine, a guest on Episode 129 of the Reading Envy Podcast. I enjoyed the themes of the novel - grief, friendship, dogs, writing - but more than that I appreciated the style, which felt like fiction as essay or autobiographical fiction, more musings than plot. My kind of read.
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A beautiful book about loss and the subsequent relationship between a woman and her lost lover's dog. Nunez is an amazing writer. Tender, poetic, and when necessary, completely straightforward. A small gorgeous book. I read a short story this author wrote years ago in Three Penny Review. It too was compelling, autobiographical, and breathtakingly violent.
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I liked it, but there's a reason why novels about writers are problematic. It's a fine character study, but there isn't enough story here to back it up.
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This book won the 2018 National Book Award for fiction, and with good reason. It's written as if the author is journaling about the suicide of her lifelong friend and mentor, trying to make sense of it all. Shortly after the funeral, the friend's widow asks the narrator to take his aging dog, who also seems to be grieving. The narrator and the friend are both writers, so much of the story revolves around writing and a writing teacher's life.
This book is so beautifully written. It's not a tear-je ...more
This book is so beautifully written. It's not a tear-je ...more
One of if not the best book I have read all year. It is a wonderful read about love, grief and dogs. I absolutely relished every second of it. No wonder it just won the National Book Award.
I enjoyed it very much.
Though the writing on a sentence level is excellent, the book as a whole left me a bit cold. I wish I could give it 3.5 stars but I can't justify 4.
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May 01, 2019
Sheryl
marked it as to-read
Dec 02, 2021
Jennifer
marked it as available-at-multcolib
Aug 06, 2022
Faezeh
marked it as to-read
Jul 19, 2024
Kristin
added it
