There really isn't a lot of cohesion, which is why it's working so well for me to treat each chapter as a self-contained piece of nonfiction (and even given that lack of cohesion, it seems ridiculous to have a chapter just called "Disability," and suddenly have the whole thing be even more of a chopped salad). I'm…

The prologue of Ghost Story is one of the most unnerving things ever written, for my money: here's this man and this young girl, traveling along, and he ties her hands before they sleep every night, and for some reason, he's terrified of her. It's so intense, and then it's coupled with this very rich, detailed…

I really loved Waters's Affinity, which is comparatively under-read: it's a Victorian ghost story in the traditional Victorian spiritualist mode, except where it's not, and it's both spooky and emotional. Tipping the Velvet is certainly less predictable, since it's a picaresque and doesn't really need a plot, and…

I read Redeployment last month and was really blown away by it (in a nuanced, empathetic kind of way): it speaks well of his research that in each story, I was like, "Okay, so this is the job you actually had."

You'll have to let us know what you think! I tried to be exciting but vague. :-)

That's a great point about Charlotte Bronte: it's really difficult to manage that show-don't-tell effectiveness in first-person (and, honestly, I'm not convinced Villette really does it—Lucy is always telling us that she's not telling us something), but that scene's a terrific example of it, as is Jane Eyre as a whole.

Slowly making my way through Far from the Tree, a massive, club-a-man-to-death-with-it nonfiction look at children who, for reasons of genius, disability, circumstance, or genetic predisposition, vary sharply from their parents: I've made it through the chapters on deafness, dwarfism, Downs, and autism, and am now in…

Love The Talisman. The crescendo of its finale is just awe-inspiring. It's like watching a chain of fireworks go off right in front of you.

I did not know that—but now, yes. That's an excellent collection. I also need someone to make "Tower of Babylon" into an animated short film, it's begging for it.

I was lucky enough to get to one of those. It was a ton of fun, and I totally agree with Persia that Cecil is especially great live. And it's a great chance to wear any purple-accented clothes you may own.

I dove into this pretty recently, catching up with the first two seasons on DVD and now the third season on iTunes, and I have nothing but praise for the way the show establishes its increasingly large cast of characters: that's another benefit of being willing to build things up slowly. The giant ensemble is very…

Upvoted, with fervent hopes for it being correct.

They're older than Station Eleven, but you might try The Serialist or Hell or High Water, which both seem to have flown largely under the radar. The Serialist is a kind of celebration of genre fiction, about a struggling pulp writer who gets the chance to co-write a convicted serial killer's memoir which, of course,…

I love Middlemarch. I read it over a couple of days one summer when my power was out and didn't miss electricity at all. (That may have been because I ended up staying in a hotel. But mostly it was Eliot!)

Privilege is a little bit, but I'm worried the third one might be more so. Ordinarily I'm all for bittersweet complexity, but then sometimes my artistic judgment goes out the window and I just want everyone to hug and be happy. I think it's because the sort-of happy ending of Swordspoint keeps sort of receding into…

It was a while before the first sequel, too, so we still have hope!

You've certainly sold me. That sounds incredible.

I need to read The Keep now. Yes, exactly this. I'd forgotten about the babies at the end of Goon Squad. She's so good at that multi-layered extrapolation and speculation: even in that one instance, you get a look at how this would effect economics (a whole new demographic market!), artistic concerns, vocabulary…

Privilege is the one I would love more if it didn't break my heart a little bit with some of the Richard/Alec stuff (but really it's the bonus short stories in the back of my copy of Swordspoint that did that. But aside from that, it's terrific fun. I still haven't read the third one, though, because it's a…

That section of Pet Sematary where Louis spins off into this fantasy of how Gage might have grown up, complete with Olympic swimming, is such a heartbreaking portrayal of a father attempting to escape his grief that it still gives me chills to think about it.