Published in 1945, Richard Wright's classic childhood autobiography vividly reveals what it was like growing up black and poor in the Jim Crow South long before the Civil Rights Movement. It’s an unsentimental but moving and distressing travel back in time that should not be missed.
Category: First Editions
A bookshop closes
Much of my book collecting mania got spent at Acorn Bookshop that’s now going out of business. Here are a few of the treasures I found, in this tribute.
Great books go a step further
What's the difference between a good book and a great one? Jonathan Safran Foer answers in an introduction to "The Fixer" by Bernard Malamud.
Which one Faulkner novel should you read?
William Faulkner wrote 19 novels. Among them -- and the one everyone typically selects when they decide, for the first time, to read a Faulkner book -- is "The Sound and the Fury." But that may not be the best choice.
A bibliomaniac’s burden
I became determined in my need to find the right reading copy of Pat Barker's World War I novel, "Regeneration." Here's what happened that afternoon.
My love for old, tattered books
Here's a recommendation to read (if you haven't already) John le Carré's classic espionage novel "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold" -- and why I read an old, beat-up 1964 copy.
Bookfair loot
One day every year in November, I fill a shopping cart with used books at a book fair in Dayton, Ohio. Here are a few of this year's treasures.
The last night of summer
In this 1963 novel, written by one of the most widely read storytellers of the 20th century, people do crazy things when the last night of summer arrives.
“It’s a terribly powerful story”
People often ask how and where I find the books and stories I read. Here's an instance where I found "one of those stories that stays with you forever."
James Salter’s Ohio connection
Several years ago, I had a memorable conversation at Barnes & Noble that revealed a little known fact about novelist and short story writer James Salter. Here's the story, as well as a remembrance of this exceptional author who died last week.
A legal thriller I couldn’t put down
Consider a trial lawyer who's an ex-con artist and a Russian mob boss on trial for murder who forces him into service via a bomb tucked into his coat, and you've got the beginning of Steve Cavanagh's debut legal thriller. It's filled with surprises and high entertainment.
Welcome new year, now here are old books
Here are three novels, two of them crime mysteries, published in 1993, 2009 and 1930. It's a way of welcoming the new year by remembering that the past in literature shall not be forgotten.
Anticipating September’s new novels
Fall is the time readers can expect to see big-name authors release new novels. Here's a handful to look forward to this coming month.
Which Man Booker nominee to read?
Thirteen novels on the 2014 Man Booker Prize Longlist present great reading selections. Here are brief descriptions, availability and what reviews have said about some of them.
Ordinary Germans and World War II
Audrey Magee's novel "The Undertaking" is about newlyweds caught up in Berlin society and the Eastern Front during World War II. Stark, moving and intelligent, this is Magee’s fictional debut.
