Less, by Andrew Sean Greer Less, the sixth book and fifth novel by Andrew Sean Greer, is a jewel-box of a novel—compact, sparkling, and filled with treasures. Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Greer’s novel is an effortless read, though that’s not to say that the story—and its […]
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray July 18 marks the 210th birthday of William Makepeace Thackeray, whose novel of social-climbing, backbiting, profligate behavior, and true love, Vanity Fair, was published in 1848 and made him a wealthy man. With numerous audio, film, and television adaptations, Vanity Fair endures, and like […]
Four New Adaptations from Kirkus Reviews’ Book to Screen This week at Kirkus, the legendary book review site, their Book to Screen column ran a feature on four very different upcoming book adaptations for the small screen, literary miniseries that range from mystery to YA to historical, all of which […]
The Vexations: a novel, by Caitlin Horrocks The lives of artists should portray artmaking for the work it is, anything else is a romanticized view, and Caitlin Horrock’s debut novel, The Vexations, is an intricate portrayal of the life of modernist composer Erik Satie—and his artmaking—that mines his most nuanced […]
A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, by Francois Truffaut, trans. by Helen Scott (1966)& Hitchcock/Truffaut, a documentary film by Kent Jones (2015) Before he began directing, Francois Truffaut was a film critic, and before that, a voracious viewer of films. The director who was a central of French cinema’s New […]
New Titles From WTAW Press The Groundhog Forever, by Henry Hoke Mark this month’s celebration of pride with the queer sequel to the movie “Groundhog Day.” In Henry Hoke’s debut novel, two film students in post-9/11 Manhattan relive the same day over and over together: the day they meet Bill Murray […]
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend, by Graham Russell Gao Hodges Anna May Wong was the first internationally acclaimed Asian American actor, with a career that spanned decades, from 1919 to 1961, and Hodges’ biography is a meticulously researched and carefully constructed account of one of early […]
The Love of A Good Woman, Stories by Alice Munro The short story has few practitioners as skilled as Alice Munro, who turns 90 this July, and who’s all but required reading during #ShortStoryMonth. Munro famously began writing stories as a young mother, finding the story took “less time.” (See […]
The Dead Fish Museum: Stories, by Charles D’Ambrosio A classic read for #shortstorymonth is Charles D’Ambrosio’s 2006 story collection The Dead Fish Museum, set in the Pacific Northwest landscape, home to the majestic Shasta Cascade mountain range, conifer forests, and crisp air, a place that in these stories informs character. […]
Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, by Zadie Smith This collection came about by accident, Zadie Smith tells us in the foreword, but the voice and curiosity that drives it makes this a seamless and satisfying read. My hope, as a reader of essays, is to learn something, whether the topic […]
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.