The Long (Book) Goodbye
The art (and math) of building a bookshelf bucket list.
Read The StoryExplore new releases from members of the Kenyon community.
Some people are so magnetic that you can’t help but be drawn to them, even when the red flags accumulate. In Halperin’s second novel, the protagonist Leah is charmed by Charlie: older, handsome, charismatic, funny and quick to fall in love. When he confesses he’s recovering from heroin addiction and swears to never use again, Leah commits to falling as in love with him as he is with her, even when that means ignoring his self-destructive tendencies. “I Could Live Here Forever” is an emotionally intelligent novel about the desire to find love, and the human cost of addiction. (Viking)
When it comes to the global politics of reproduction, Singh has zeroed in on a particularly fascinating area of study: how impoverished Muslim women in Lucknow, India’s most heavily populated state, cope with infertility. Exploring the stigmas, social mores and colonial vestiges of reproduction and sexual propriety, Singh finds these women are willing to do whatever they need — even if that means abandoning social and religious expectations — to have the families they desire. (Indiana University Press)
Winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize, the poems of “Long Voyage Gathering Light” travels deftly between Alaska and Ohio, zooming in on a particularly beautiful track in the snow and panning out to articulate epiphanies about the world. Kooistra captures both the human and the nature in human nature in a poignant, eloquent way that demands the readers stop and pay attention to their own landscape. (Cloudbank Books)
Steeped in Greek mythology, “I Never Liked You Anyway” follows newly dead Eurydice as she struggles to learn all she needs to know in the afterlife. She’s failing her Haunting and Threads of Fate classes, and is even struggling in Baking Disasters. What’s a soul to do? She hopes against hope that her new husband, Orpheus, and their polyamorous family will rescue her from the land of the dead. Following the theme of mythology and otherworldly settings populated by spectacular beings, Kurella’s short-story collection “When I Was Lost” has everything from werewolves, mermaids and fairies to scorpion people and living ships. (Vernacular Books/Trepidatio Publishing)
Winner of the National Indie Excellence Award, “A Signal for Redemption” is the first in the New Foundation Project sci-fi series. When the spaceship Redemption is a thousand years late to dock on the planet its hull full of settlers hope to call home, the ship is overcrowded and no longer able to sustain the life of its interplanetary settlers. Expecting their new home planet to be technologically advanced, they’re surprised to find horse-drawn carriages, blacksmiths and other vestiges of what the settlers assumed was a bygone way of life. With lives on the line, Piers Haldon must figure out a way to land safely against all odds. (Self-published)
Phil Cerny ’67, Editor, “Heterarchy in World Politics”
David Culp ’75, “The Book of Matthew L.” and “Carrie: An American Classic”
Charles L. Leary ’88, “Leary’s Global Wineology: A Guide to Wine Education, Mentorships, and Scholarships”
Eric Lehman ’94, “9 Lupine Road”
Thomas D. LaBaugh ’64, “How to Make a Powerful, Positive Impact: On Relationships, Profits, Productivity, Retention, Customer Service, and Job Security. It Works. It Costs You Nothing!”
James R. “Jim” Pierce ’78, “Treachery: A Story of Deception Behind Union Lines”
Katherine H. Terrell ’95, “Scripting the Nation: Court Poetry and the Authority of History in Late Medieval Scotland”
Brett M. Pierce ‘81, “Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom”
Esmeralda Mora Román ’08, “Los quince de Raquel”
Katie Weber ’10, “Living in the Gray”
The art (and math) of building a bookshelf bucket list.
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