Related Post: The Classics Spin #12 Koestler, Arthur. Darkness at Noon Translated by Daphne Hardy Original publication date: 1940 Rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1966 ISBN 0–553–26595–4 Originally written in German and translated into English by Koestler’s companion Daphne Hardy, Darkness at Noon was first published in 1940. Set in an unnamed country, the […]
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I’m trying out something different this week. I have three blogs: Notes in the Margin: about books, authors, reading, and all things literary Change of Perspective: about psychology, life stories, memoirs, and writing Retreading for Retirement: my personal blog about retirement, aging, and moving to a new city Because of these wide-ranging interests, I often
I reread “All the King’s Men” recently, in the wake of the Ohio and Florida primaries. It remains a salty, living thing. There’s no need for literary or political pundits to bring in the defibrillators. It is also eerily prescient, in its portrait of the rise of a demagogue, about some of the dark uses
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Related Post: 10 Big Books I Have Read & Loved While scanning my bookshelves for Big Books I have read, I also found six that I have already read but want to read again. You’d think that once through a Big Book would be enough, but in fact Big Books contain so much that they
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Not too long ago, in the book section at Target, I overheard a woman say to her companion, “I stay away from big books.” They walked away, so I didn’t get to hear any more of the conversation, but it made me think about big books. I can imagine many reasons someone might offer for
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Writing Tips: James Lee Burke Usually I would put writing tips from a big-time author under the heading “on writing” rather than “on novels and novelists.” But I’m including these tips from one of my favorite mystery writers, James Lee Burke, here because he has written them out as an essay rather than a list
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If you enjoyed a good book and you’re a woman, the critics think you’re wrong Jennifer Weiner never passes up an opportunity to lament how the world of literary criticism mistreats authors (like her) and readers of popular literature. “Every once in a while,” she explains, “a literary novel becomes tremendously popular, transcending the typical
Vanishing Point This piece is a translation of a speech given by Swedish novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard on receiving a German literary award. Here the writer explains how reading fiction helps us to understand humanity in general by focusing our awareness on individual people. What characterizes our age is “the sheer volume of images of
Out with vampires, in with haunted houses: the ghost story is back Just in time for Halloween (or shortly thereafter), here are several new ghost stories: It has been supplanted in recent years by vampires, witches and other monsters, but now the good old-fashioned ghost story is back with a bang, with everyone from debut
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