Review

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Books I Finished in May

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert Original publication date: 1857 Translated by Lydia Davis (Penguin Books, 2010) Highly recommended Madame Bovary is a seminal work in the rise of literary realism: an approach that attempts to describe life without idealization or romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not limited to any one century or group of writers, […]

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The Classics Club

Review: “A Canticle for Leibowitz”

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. © 1959 This book was popular when I was in college back in the late 1960s. I never got around to reading it back then, and the same mass market paperback has been kicking around on my bookshelves ever since then. It won the 1961 Hugo

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woman reading

Books I Finished in April

11/22/63 by Stephen King Recommended Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in the small town of Lisbon Falls, Maine. To earn some extra money, he also teaches English to adult GED students. The only other activity in his life is moping around and lamenting the recent divorce from his short-term alcoholic wife.

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Read Books

The Classics Spin #12: “Darkness at Noon”

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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man reading a big book

2 Big Books That Disappointed Me

Related Posts: 10 Big Books I Have Read & Loved 6 Big Books I Keep Meaning to Reread 6 Big Books on My Reading List I’ve been writing a lot about Big Books lately. Since I no longer continue to slog through books that don’t engage me (although I’ll give a Big Book, one of

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“The Headless Hawk,” Truman Capote

Capote, Truman. “The Headless Hawk” (1945) In The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time Edited by Mary Louise Aswell Notes and Introduction by Frederic Wertham, M.D. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947 Related Posts: “The World Within”: Introduction “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” Conrad Aiken “The Door,” E.B. White “I Am Lazarus,” Anna Kavan This

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Review: “Go Set a Watchman”

Lee, Harper. Go Set a Watchman New York: HarperCollins, 2015 ISBN 978–0–06–240985–0 You won’t envision Gregory Peck when you read what Atticus Finch has to say to his daughter late in this novel: “You realize that our Negro population is backward, don’t you?” (p. 242) “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools

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On Novels and Novelists

7 Book Franchises We Really Need To Say Goodbye To Claire Fallon writes in the Huffington Post: Let’s be honest: Too many series and franchises are reworked and rebooted until there’s simply no life left in them. As much as fans may clamor to spend more money on another Dune book, for example, they’re more

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The Classics Club

The Classics Spin #9: “Cannery Row”

Back in March I won the opportunity to read John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row for The Classics Spin #9. And I mistakenly thought the completion date was May 15. In fact, it was May 5. Not that it really matters, since I’m a bit late either way. But I did finally finish reading the book on

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woman reading

Why You Never Hear Stories about Wicked Stepfathers

You know the story of Cinderella. She’s a princess, dearly loved by her father, the king. When her mother dies, her father eventually marries a widow with daughters of her own. But nothing much changes for Cinderella as long as her father lives and continues to protect her and treat her like the princess she

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