There are two conventions prevalent at the turn of the New Year of which I am highly skeptical: “Best Of” end-of-the-year lists and New Year’s resolutions. “Best Of” end-of-the-year lists because how can anyone say that their highly subjective and often dubious rankings of all the books that have been […]
The Perfume Collector Kathleen Tessaro Last week, I loaned out my copy of Kathleen Tessaro’s lovely 2013 novel The Perfume Collector to two friends; the first one to borrow it ended up buying it for her e-reader, the other one told me that she was close to the final pages […]
Bartleby, the Scrivener, by Herman Melville Overworked employees, endless legal documents to be copied, the futility of dead letters—it’s no wonder Bartleby, Melville’s titular anti-hero is in a bad way. Whether he’s mad or not depends on who you ask, though in Melville’s world, the law copyist, or scrivener, who […]
Recently, the New York Times came out with their list of 100 Most Notable Books for 2014, and the literary world took notice. I certainly will admit to taking notice. I immediately ran down the list and counted up how many of the books on the list I had read. […]
We’ve all seen the adage, “So many books, so little time!” I myself find this to be so very true – there are indeed many, many wonderful books available to most of us, too many to be read in one lifetime. So where does someone who loves books draw the […]
Hi, my name is Sharon. I’m a library request addict. It used to be that I would only request a few books a week from my local library. Books I’d been wanting to read for a while or books that friends had recommended, occasionally a title I had read about […]
The Master, by Colm Tóibín I was only a page or so into Colm Tóibín’s novel, when it became clear that its subject, Henry James, was being portrayed not only through historical material of his life, but in a prose style suggestive of the subject himself. The Master, published in […]
A Brief Look at Three Books on Writing Craft —Lauren Alwan When it comes to books on the craft of writing, I tend to like those that teach through close readings of literature. Maybe it has to do with the grad program I attended, or that when I’m caught up […]
Knuckleball Ned R.A. Dickey Tuesday night was Major League Baseball’s All Star Game, and in honor of the mid-season classic, my recommendation for this week is a fun and uplifting children’s book written by one of baseball’s most interesting active players: Cy Young award winning knuckleball pitcher R.A. Dickey. Written […]
William Shakespeare The Sonnets It may be a day late to pin this recommendation to the 450th anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, but I still can think of no better way to mark the end of National Poetry Month than to pause and take note of […]
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.