The First Bad Man was our February book club selection, but I wasn't able to get a copy from the library until it was much too late, short and quick of a read as it is. Instead I got the enjoy the surprisingly delightful experience of hearing my friends discuss it, which only whet my appetite to read it. There were many funny remarks that made me reflect on what my friends think about me, including "I'd recommend you read it -- but I wouldn't recommend most people read it," and "I think you should read it because you'd enjoy thinking about it and writing about it."

They were all right -- I did really enjoy it and I was really anxious to blog about it. And I, too, would not recommend it to very many people. It is a very contemporary novel that somehow manages to make the normal and the mundane feel so extraordinary and grotesque. It reminded me of Sheila Heti's writing in its frankness about ordinary life. There is a constant tension in the characters, and as a reader you will always be wondering if they are decidedly strange and their actions macabre, of if you are just glimpsing the average internal life of an average human.

Miranda July is such a famous figure in certain circles, so I truly did not expect much from this novel, and I was completely blown away by it. The blurb from Hilton Als on the back cover helped, and I'm really anxious to read her short story collection now.

HBO has been on a long adaptation rights tear, and the latest addition to their stable of literary source material is Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy. Unlike so many of their other exciting literary adaptation projects that are currently languishing in HBO purgatory, this one has a director attached: Darren Aronofsky.

The annual literary issue of the New Yorker is out, and includes some really stellar fiction, with contributions by the likes of Alison Bechdel, Rachel Kushner, Karen Russell, Miranda July, and Haruki Murakami, along with a great Talk of the Town piece on the #YesAllWomen movement by Rebecca Mead. Interestingly, it looks like the fiction this year is dominated by female contributors. There is also a long profile on John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, for those of you who, like me, don't keep up on YA fiction.

Finally, BookExpo America was last week. The biggest news story to come out of the event was widespread criticism of the lack of diversity among panelists. For anyone interested in everything else that happened at BEA, here is a very nice round-up of summaries and blog posts, mostly written by librarians and book bloggers.