Today's #WaferThinBook: December, by Alexander Kluge and Gerhard Richter, tr. Martin Chalmers (2010/2021, 118p.)
Richter's stunning photos of a snow-covered forest interspersed with 39 stories, 1-2 per day, some historical, some autobiographical, some fictional, all about the elasticity of time.

Today's #WaferThinBook: Fun! What Entertainment Tells Us About Living a Good Life by Alan McKee (2016, 125p.)
A serious piece of academic thought that quotes The Simpsons and Iain M. Banks in search of fun as influence for media makers and consumer choices. A few key quotes: 🧵

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Double Hook by Sheila Watson (1959, 128p.)
In some of the sparest prose you'll ever read, Watson captures a few summer days in the thoughts and experiences of the people of a village in the Canadian Rockies. Sadly, almost unknown outside Canada.

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Evening of the Holiday by Shirley Hazzard (1966, 144p.)
Sophie, half English, half Italian, meets Tancredi, separated (whatever that meant in 1960s Italy). Charmed, then suspicious, then in love (and he more so). If you love K. Hepburn's movie Summertime, give it a try.

Today's #WaferThinBook: Embalming Mom: Essays in Life by Janet Burroway (2002, 163p.)
"In August of 1972 I came to Tallahassee, Florida, in search of a gas stove. It was a propitious season for suicide..."
Man, if that doesn't make you want to read this, nuthin' I say will.
Oh...and Merry Christmas!

Today's #WaferThinBook: The Homecoming Party by Carmine Abate, tr. Anthony Shugaar (2010, 171p.)
Christmas Eve in a mostly-Albanian village in southern Italy. A father who spends most of the year working in France talks with his son, who resents his absences. Each hides a painful family secret.

Today's #WaferThinBook: Windows by J. B. Pontalis, tr. Anne Qunney (2003, 114p.)
Near the end of his career, veteran psychoanalyst Pontalis reflects on his profession, his clients, his neighbors, and himself in 50-some brief essays, each based on "a lexicon for personal use."

Today's #WaferThinBook: MOTHERs by Rachel Zucker (2014, 155p.)
In what she's described as "Prose but so fragmented that no one but poets would want to read it," Zucker works through memories, emotions, and confusions about her birth mother and mentor mothers. Intensely personal, intensely literary.

Today's #WaferThinBook: These Particular Women by Kat Meads (2023, 168p.)
A collection of essays about (mostly) literary women written not as critic or biographer or memoirist but as simply one person endlessly fascinated by how people are who they are. And hence, an endlessly fascinating book.

Today's #WaferThinBook: Famous Fathers & Other Stories by Pia Z. Ehrhardt (2007, 166p.)
"Yet why not say what happened?" This line from Robert Lowell opens and captures the spirit of this collection. Ehrhardt writes about recognizable people and families in all their failures and good intentions.