Lisa Appignanesi's "Mad, Bad & Sad" is coming out in paperback end of August. This history of female mental illness got great reviews from its hardcover days. Worth a look.
Dear Gertrude
A book about Gertrude Tennant published by Yale University Press offers up 24 new letters written by Gustave Flaubert to the Victorian lady. A rare discovery.
Rotation update
I've moved books from The Reading Table to the Currently Reading List, plus added books to The Reading Table. Here's an update.
Garrison Keillor reads George Orwell
In his famous Prairie Home Companion voice, Keillor reads "A Hanging" for Lapham's Quarterly. A must listen 10-15 minute audio.
Why read Rumer Godden?
She was a prolific writer during the 20th Century. As much as I'm enjoying "In This House of Brede," published in 1969, she's not striking me as an author to pursue.
Ponder me, remember me
"Do Not Deny Me" is a new short story collection whose characters are drawn from everyday life. Facing distressing circumstances, they reach for hope and new ways to go forward.
A bookshop across the pond
While reading the London Review of Books, I discovered some upcoming Fall releases in the U.S. are already available in the U.K. I also found a new place to spend my money - at the London Review Bookshop.
Come on back to the typewriter
An impulsive mid-day trip to a bookstore on the other side of town connected me to unexpected treasures of Anne Sexton's poetry. Here's what I bought, and why I thought of Kathleen Norris's "Acedia & Me."
The greatest war novel of all time
Erich Maria Remarque fought in the horrific trench warfare of World War I and survived to write "All Quiet on the Western Front." He gives his narrator, a German soldier, insight that, in moving, simplistic prose, expresses loss of emotional youth and wisdom of war's follies. Some passages and scenes, so personal, so lyric, call to be reread several times.
Headlights on September
Publisher's Weekly issued "The Road to Fall Books" this week. From the looks of the lists within, we'll be bombarded with a slew of new selections. Here's what caught my attention.
How romance adds up
The June 22nd issue of The New Yorker features a profile of mega-selling romance writer Nora Roberts. My experience with the romance genre is limited (best we make that "extremely limited"), but the profile interested me for its data on the genre.
A winning debut
Michael Thomas recently received the 2009 International Impac Dublin Literary Award for his debut novel, "Man Gone Down." It was chosen out of a final list of eight novels from the United States, Norway, India, Pakistan and France. If this stellar novel is not on your reading table, it should be.
54 years, 54 books
To celebrate my birthday today - turning a frolicsome 54 - I compiled a list of 54 favorite books. The majority are novels, but there are also mysteries (Daphne du Maurier), memoirs (Patricia Hampl), Vietnam books (Tim O'Brien), classics (Norman MacLean), short stories (Ellen Gilchrist), Pulitzer Prize winners (Wallace Stegner) and more. Not a mere list, though, but also descriptions and commentary to help fill those summer reading totes.
He couldn’t stop
Walter Kirn's new memoir mocks the academic meritocracy that deemed him a scholarly achiever. "Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever" reveals he was a student who collected academic awards and prizes, honors and commendations, as if it were a game to be played and not an education to be gained. It's a sobering and funny book.
The answer’s in the carpet
"Of Human Bondage" is William Somerset Maugham's masterpiece and a classic coming-of-age story originally published in 1915. It follows protagonist Philip Carey, from childhood through young adult years, as an artist in Paris and a medical student in London. Along the way, he wrestles with the meaning of life.
The Longest Chapter 