PSG Reads: What We’re Reading Now

by Sarah Rush

Spring 2017 Intern

 

As a child, I was the classic bookworm—there was rarely a time when I was seen without a novel held lovingly in my arms. I fit in well at PSG it seems: My coworkers are proud to call themselves bookworms, too. Let’s peek into the bookshelves of the PSG staff and see what everybody is reading!

Historical fiction is trendy in the office currently. Kate’s begun digging through Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which isn’t too surprising, considering she owns three copies of it (her favorite is a stunning letterpress version with the novel’s opening line printed on the cover in gold foil). Ken’s taken up Pam Jenoff’s The Orphan’s Tale, a survival story of a woman hiding in a traveling circus during World War II. And of course there’s a historical fantasy novel on the bookshelf this semester. (Remember the staff’s fascination with fantasy and science fiction?) Marianna is enjoying Naomi Novik’s Throne of Jade, the second book in the Temeraire series, which tells the story of an aerial corps of warriors and dragons defending Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

The office’s passion for speculative fiction remains strong. Alyssa is flying through Maria V. Snyder’s Study series, tales of a young woman honing her magical abilities while acting as a political liaison between two disagreeing countries. Her dedication to the series is clear: she just finished the fifth book, Night Study, and plans to dive into the sixth soon. Tess is rereading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in expectation of its upcoming TV adaptation. The book details an alternate world in which populations have dwindled, and women are subjugated into roles depending on their immediate “use” to society. I’m currently lugging around The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, a collection of 52 historical and modern sci-fi short stories, featuring works by William Gibson, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov and other famous authors of the genre.

But these aren’t the only genres on our bookshelf. Sam is riffling through Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, a non-fiction collection of the filmmaker’s notes and inspirations. And Eileen’s got a soft spot for crime and suspense novels. She’s been flipping the pages of Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström’s Three Seconds. Translated from its original Swedish, the novel features a top secret operative of the Swedish police force who goes undercover to infiltrate the Polish Mafia. Definitely exciting stuff!

It’s no surprise that the staff here at PSG are avid readers. A glimpse at our imaginary collective bookshelf reveals exactly what we’ve all been up to in our literary lives.

Did You Know?

The longest sentence ever published in literature can be found in Mathias Énard’s 2010 novel Zone. The majority of the book consists of a single 150,000-word sentence. The story is told from inside the main character’s mind while he rides a train, and is considered an extreme version of stream of consciousness.