Don't even think about reading these new books — at least, not unless they shape up real quick and start respecting the venerable genre distinctions of our forebears. The last thing we want to do is encourage the kind of troublingly seductive world they represent, in which memoir can just be mixed willy-nilly with fiction, and history, and fantasy and philosophy and … well, you get the idea. We teeter on the cusp of utter madness.

Won't somebody please think of the genres!

OK, I'll admit: I'm being a bit facetious here. All six of the following notable releases do deserve your attention for one reason or another — many, precisely for their spry dance with the expectations established by the genres they invoke. But I do ask that, when you pull one of them down and crack it open, you a

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