515 ratings | 55 reviews
avg rating: 4.90

(since June 07)

Michael's bookshelves

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Michael A. FitzGerald

author profile

gender

male

place of birth

Rochester, Minnesota, United States

website

http://www.radiantdays.com

genre

Literature & Fiction

influences

modern lighting, failure

about this author

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Michael A. FitzGerald is the author of Radiant Days. The story tracks a dissolving love triangle between a hapless American, a beautiful Hungarian junkie, and a young British journalist during the last days of the Balkan War. Critics have called the writing "beautiful and lucid" and said the book "flawlessly and astutely mirrors the ennui and confusion of this generation."

FitzGerald was raised in Skaneateles, NY. He holds an MFA from the University of Montana. He has been the recipient of a Fishtrap Fellowship, an Idaho Commission on the Arts Literature Fellowship, and an ICA Quickfunds grant. His shorter works can be found in Swink, Massachusetts Review, Cut...more

books by Michael A. FitzGerald

combine editions
avg rating: 4.04 | 68 ratings | 1 distinct work

Radiant Days (Paperback)
by Michael A. FitzGerald (goodreads author!)
avg rating 4.04 — 68 ratings — published 2007

my rating:

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, perform a search.

Michael is currently reading

	06/22 Michael is currently reading: APOLOGIES FORTHCOMING (Paperback) by Xujun Eberlein (Goodreads author!) bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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	09/30 Michael is currently reading: Ovenman: A Novel (Paperback) by Jeff Parker (Goodreads author!) bookshelves: alive, currently-reading	my rating:
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	08/16 Michael is currently reading: Summer in Baden-Baden (Paperback) by Leonid Tsypkin bookshelves: currently-reading, dead	my rating:
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Michael's recent updates (rss)

July 22

Michael read and liked Vicki's review of The 351 Books of Irma Acuri: A Novel:

"First novels are a bit of an obsession of mine. I love raw talent finding itself on the page. But, it is rare that a first novel leave my perceptions altered in some way. David Bajo has written a strange and wonderful debut novel that haunts you from...more "

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July 15

Michael marked as to-read:
The Life I Lead (Hardcover)
by Keith Banner
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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July 11

Michael added:
We (Library Binding)
by Charles A. Lindbergh

my rating:

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July 08

Michael read and liked Jason's review of Unlucky Lucky Days (American Readers Series):

"I don't pretend to understand each of these little stories, but those that I do I really enjoyed. I hope my mild confusion was merely a result of an inadvertent line-skip while reading on the light rail, rather than some defect on the author's part. ...more "

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June 24

Michael read and liked Jason Pettus's review of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers:

"(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

So first, a confession from my personal life that is relevant to tod...more (My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

So first, a confession from my personal life that is relevant to today's essay; that like many others, I too once fell in love with someone while on a foreign trip, in many ways precisely because it was a foreign country and she was a foreigner within that country. And like many others, it wasn't just simple lust that made me fall in love with this person so intensely in such a short period, nor just a shared set of opinions and tastes; it was that I was feeling so scared and confused and alone in that foreign country, not able to even begin expressing myself adequately there about the emotions I was having, with this good-looking woman suddenly there and seemingly understanding everything I was going through without me ever having to say anything. In the middle of a very stressful international trip, she became a life preserver that I threw myself at, a small moment of calm in an unending storm that had been happening for nearly a month at the point I met her. And this of course is why the woman was ultimately not interested in a romance with me, because she understood where these emotions of mine were coming from, that for me it was all about the experience and little to do with her in particular; and she knew this of course because she had done some international traveling herself in the past, and had had the exact same experience that I was going through, but in her case did end up getting romantically involved with the person in question, which of course ended in disaster a few months later, such a surety that you didn't even really need me to mention it.

Like I said, it's a well-known story from the world of international travel, a situation that is tackled once again in the extremely delightful new novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, the first English-language book by Chinese-British author Xiaolu Guo, one that was short-listed for this year's Orange Prize and has gone on to become a surprise commercial hit. Based on Guo's own experiences when first moving to London at the turn of the millennium, the novel uses a personal-journal format to track the first year of a new immigrant, using only the words that immigrant knows at any given moment; it's a literary trick that could've been awfully gimmicky if flubbed, but here Guo uses it to profoundly comment on Western culture from the eyes of an Easterner, to use the difficulty of a new language to metaphorically examine the entire society that uses the language. It is a book simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly sad, a story that will strike a lot of powerful (and sometimes painful) chords among anyone who has done any amount of international traveling themselves; one of those books that makes you want to run out and buy a bunch of copies, so that you can slap them into friends' hands and yell, "See, this is why I go to all the trouble that I do so that I can travel. Read this and you'll finally get it." Oh, and did I mention that it's really freakin' dirty too? It's really freakin' dirty too, not in a shockingly pornographic way (as are many of the sexual projects that get reviewed here), but rather in a delightful and highly erotic way, with Guo again using the quirky details of the English language to get across some highly symbolic (and temperature-raising) mental images.

Like many travel stories, the actual plotline of Dictionary is a fairly simple one......less "

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June 20

New comment on Jeff's review of The Sportswriter (Harvill Panther)

Michael wrote: "Pretty funny, Jeff.

Despite the snarky remark in the book (meant as a comment on the character not...more "

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June 16

Michael marked as to-read:
Shy Green Fields (Paperback)
by Hugh Behm-Steinberg (Goodreads author!)
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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June 11

Michael marked as to-read:
The Sky Changes (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))
by Gilbert Sorrentino
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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June 07

Michael marked as to-read:
In Hoboken (Paperback)
by Christian Bauman (Goodreads author!)
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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see all 543 of Michael's books »

Michael's groups (recent posts)

Goodreads Feedback — 1005 members — last activity 1 minute ago
This is a place to give feedback about Goodreads. Feature ideas, bugs, or any other suggestion for improvement. The Goodreads staff monitors this gr...more

Great Translations / ترجمه هاي ماندگار — 306 members — last activity 2 hours, 18 min ago
In this group we are to discuss the recreation of books in the form of language
زايش دوباره در بستر زبان

Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer — 276 members — last activity 17 hours, 7 min ago
For fans of Stephenie Meyer and her incredible Twilight series! If you love Bella Swan, Edward Cullen and Jacob Black then come on in and talk about i...more

READING AS WRITERS — 341 members — last activity 1 day ago, 05:41AM
Those lines that startle you, endings that follow you for days, maybe a style that disturbs you but you can't stop reading. Discuss it all here.

First Novels & Memoirs — 60 members — last activity 2 days ago, 02:00PM
a book club focused on...surprise surprise...first novels and memoirs...

see all of Michael's groups »

Michael's friend comments

showing 1-10 of 10. (add a comment | view all)

from Edan

03/12/2008 06:32AM

Wait, is Radiant Days a paperback original? All this time, I was waiting for the paperback to come out...

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from Michael

12/28/2007 10:32AM

Congrats on the LA Times pick! That's great news.

Happy New Year,
Michael

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from Edan

12/27/2007 10:45AM

Hey, I saw that your book made LA Weekly's Best of 2007 list! Congratulations!

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from Jeremy

12/15/2007 12:37PM

Thanks for the friendship, and for the interest in my novel. If you end up checking it out, I hope you enjoy it. And I'd love to hear what you think.

If you don't mind sharing--I'm curious, what's your favorite novel of all time (if you have one)?

Here’s wishing you a fantastic day filled with fabulous fates, fanciful festivities, and frolicking phantom footstools.

-Jeremy :)

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from Kevin

11/12/2007 10:05PM

Michael,
I like your choices. We have many similarities. I'll have to check out your book.
KS

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from Daniel

09/03/2007 11:02AM

Hey Michael! I'm not gonna read many books anymore. Why should I? Your reviews are so good that from now on I'll just read your reviews.

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from Gita

08/25/2007 06:39AM

Hi Michael, thanks for the add, have a great weekend

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from Michael

08/02/2007 05:23AM

Two new reviews of Radiant Days came out this week.

Jason Pettus over at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography says the book is "subversively funny" and "infinitely sad".
Full Review:
[link:http://www.cclapcenter.com/200...]

And a feature on this month's Hipster Book Club.
"Radiant Days is a brilliant, archly funny, and painfully accurate book..."
Full Review:
[link:http://www.hipsterbookclub.com...]

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from Simon A.

07/08/2007 03:04PM

Hello, Michael. Thanks for the add and thanks for the words of encouragement. Hope your book is doing well. I'll have to check it out soon.

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from Jonathan

07/02/2007 10:46PM

Yes, that's the Boise library. To my knowledge, they are the only city in the country that is so excited about having a library that they need an exclamation point.

Thanks for the add.

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