How to read when my concentration is shot? I'm channeling Anne Lamott. Also, you'll find here novels by Shirley Jackson, TaraShea Nesbit, Alison Moore, Anne Enright, and Mick Herron.
Category: Old Books
Lessons for a book critic
Larry Heinemann won the 1987 National Book Award for fiction. It was a controversial upset. Here's why his story has stayed with me all these years.
Books I’m recommending
I've captured here the novels I mentioned on NPR member station WOSU All Sides Weekend Books that aired November 8, 2019.
Classic horror with an evil twin
Thomas Tryon's "The Other" unnerved me the first time I read it when I was 16. It still creeps me out.
This reading life: finding a book you love
We should allow ourselves more often to wander through the library stacks. Here are two novels I hadn't planned on reading.
The 100 Best Novels in Translation
We depend on translators to bring us the world's literature. We also depend on them to make the right decisions on how to bring a novel to life, wrestling with fidelity to the original versus comprehension for the reader. This book is not only a list, but a guide to those who do this marvelous work.
21 good books for the summer
On the advent of the longest day of the year and the true beginning of summer, here's a list of books to cherry pick for your summer reading. They are riveting, involving, devastating or simply delightfully satisfying. But if you're looking for new releases, they're not here.
Why “Black Boy” still matters
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.
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.
My two favorite memoirs this year
Benjamin Taylor and Joyce Johnson lived dramatically different young lives, but their stories similarly and movingly capture two iconic times in history: the Beat Movement and November 22, 1963.
A city inspector’s book list
Every once in a while, a person I hire to work at my house will pause in front of the book cases. This is one of those occasions.
An old good book for the beach
"Birdsong" by Stephen Faulks is a powerful epic not to be overlooked and a stunning portrayal of courage and redemption.
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.
Books you can’t stop reading
Sometimes you just want a good literary page turner. The kind that’s got more heft to it than "Gone Girl" and gives you something to think about after you’ve breathlessly reached the end. Well, here you go.
“They think we’re different, you know.”
Most know "In the Heat of the Night" for the 1967 Academy Award-winning movie starring Sydney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The film is based on the mystery novel with the same title by John Ball, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. I thought it was time I read it.
The Longest Chapter 