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: Other Books
Summer prize-winning reads
This summer, fill the beach bag with 2019 award winners. From the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction to the recently awarded Women's Prize for Fiction, here are seven novels you'll be glad you read.
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.
A selection of new books
Here are a few titles I’ve gathered from my ongoing hunt for good books, including novels to anticipate in 2019, more Lucia Berlin stories, and the 2017 Prix Goncourt winner.
The lost art of authors’ photos
Oh for authors' photos that used to be on the backs of books. They were so styled and intriguing, compelling us to wonder about the person who created the book. Here are some great ones.
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.
Letters from bewilderment
This new collection of essays -- "The Correspondence" -- is so smartly entertaining I read many parts of it out loud to savor the enjoyment. Here's a glimpse of J. D. Daniels' debut.
The best in mystery fiction
It never fails. The annual Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Awards bring to the forefront not-to-miss, stay-up-all-night mystery novels. Here are the three that won in the categories of Best Novel, Best First Novel by an American Author and Best Paperback Original for 2016.
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 lesson of the book critic
What happens when you're supposed to be in-the-know about new books being published, but you bury yourself in the old books?
Compelling tales nominated by librarians
We're in the count-down days to the announcement of the winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It's not the winner I'm most interested in but the short-list of nominees, which always provides a whopping good reading list. Here are the 10 in the line-up.
Books to look forward to in May & June
A gathering of five books -- fiction and non-fiction -- soon to hit bookstores.
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.
What’s in your living room?
Richard McGuire's graphic novel "Here" covers thousands of years from one fixed corner of a living room in a suburban house. It's not a book to read as much as to experience, a perfect browsable companion for any time, any place.
A few French novels (in translation)
French author Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. Looking into his "oeuvre" made me curious about other French books. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, in its recently announced 2015 longlist, provided these, which look wonderful.
The Longest Chapter 