Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land (2016) This is part 3 in an ongoing series exploring books that address the current political, social, and economic situation in the US. Part 1: The Unwinding Part 2: Dark Money When sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild set out to explore what she calls the Great Paradox — […]
Elizabeth Goudge, Towers in the Mist (1937) This book is offered in a giveaway open through April 26. Click the link to enter! Oxford has changed much in the eighty years since Elizabeth Goudge lived there, and even more since the sixteenth century. Yet it still bears within it the weight of its long history, […]
Daphne Du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (1951) The 1951 Club is the latest in a series of events put together by Simon of Stuck in a Book and Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which encourages us to read books published in a particular year. Please visit Simon’s blog for links to other 1951 books — […]
Kassi Underwood, May Cause Love (2017) At the age of nineteen, Kassi Underwood had an abortion. She was a directionless college student, drinking too much and pursuing a road-to-nowhere relationship with a drug dealer in the absence of her childhood sweetheart from her Kentucky home town. Abortion seemed the only logical, the only compassionate option, […]
Mary Renault, The King Must Die (1958) Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea (1962) What is a true king? That question runs throughout the two historical novels that Mary Renault wrote about Theseus, the legendary ruler of Athens. As the young hero grows up, from mysterious beginnings, through trials that test his strength both […]
George Packer, The Unwinding (2013) This post is part of a series based around the New York Times’s list of “books to understand Trump’s win.” Rachel of Hibernator’s Library suggested doing a readalong of these six books, and I thought it was a great idea. So did several other people, and I hope that we’ll […]
Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (1943) I’m not very well-versed in world literature, and when I do read works in translation they tend to be from Europe. But I really want to do something about that, and as I looked for great novels from other continents to broaden my horizons, The Makioka Sisters kept coming […]
E. M. Delafield, Diary of a Provincial Lady (1930) I’ve seen this book mentioned as a favorite by many, and lauded as a comic classic, and when a Folio Society edition came my way at a very reasonable price, I couldn’t resist. So I finally got to encounter the “provincial lady” and see what she […]
Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night (1941) Eugene O’Neill, Ah, Wilderness! (1933) Eugene O’Neill, A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943) Before I embarked on the Reading New England challenge, I had no awareness of Eugene O’Neill as a Connecticut author. My experience of his plays was limited to a reading of Mourning Becomes Electra […]
Alexandra Risen, Unearthed (2016) Subtitled “Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden,” Unearthed is a gardening memoir that will appeal even to non-gardeners (like me). To start with, there’s the chance to vicariously experience taking an unloved, abandoned place and turning it into a magical place of refuge and healing — without having […]