Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon On a dismal morning in March, 1978, William Least Heat-Moon left Columbia, Missouri, on Interstate 70. It was “the fastest route east out of the homeland,” he would later write, and the starting point of what would be a remarkable and influential journey through the […]
Instructions: Everything You’ll Need to Know on Your Journey Neil Gaiman Illustrated by Charles Vess How do you write a recommendation for a book that probably has less words than this recommendation? That’s the dilemma I had once I decided to recommend Neil Gaiman’s poem-as-book, Instructions: Everything You’ll Need to […]
The Pretty Girl, a novella and stories, by Debra Spark. In Spark’s 2012 collection, the puzzling and the deceptive abound—in Illusions, miniatures, stories hidden in pictures—especially in pictures. These inhabit the lives of Spark’s characters as mysteries of a familiar nature: hidden family histories, missed opportunities with those who are […]
The Firefox Book, by Elliot Wigginton (editor) Perfect for #throwbackthursday, this compendium of customs and rural living practices was published in 1972, and was in its time hugely influential. The local tradition and lore documented in The Foxfire Book comes firsthand from longtime residents of Southern Appalachia. At the height […]
Back Roads and Frontal Lobes Brady Allen I cannot think of a better book to recommend in this season of spooky and creepy than Brady Allen’s collection of short stories, Back Roads and Frontal Lobes. Allen’s writing is superbly crafted, seemingly effortless and wholly familiar. His characters are immediately recognizable […]
Elsewhere, A Memoir Richard Russo For lack of better word, Richard Russo says, he calls this book a memoir. Though in fact, that is the perfect word for this story of mother and son. The word memoir has its origins in the late 15th century French term for memorandum or […]
Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin Toibin’s 2009 novel, which won that year’s Costa Award, is a lovely and haunting story set in 1950s Dublin and New York. It tells of Eilis Lacey, born and raised in Enniscorthy, in Ireland’s County Wexford, and her immigration to the United States as a young […]
Ship Fever: Stories, by Andrea Barrett It’s been called the Oscars of the book world, and indeed, in recent years the National Book Awards have become a glittery, red carpet affair, with a press box, photographers, and a ballroom full of candlelit tables and white coated waiters at Cipriani’s. And yet, […]
Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox. This classic of literary fiction, written in 1970, is also a classic example of a book that was lost to readers, then found. In 1999, when this novel—and all Paula Fox’s adult novels—fell out of print, interest in the author and her work was almost […]
13, rue Thérèse Elena Mauli Shapiro 13, rue Thérèse is a most singular novel: perhaps not in subject matter (the reconstruction of a life from mementos and letters), but in style, substance, and subtext. While it is deeply entrenched in the life of a woman who lived in France from the […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.