Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972) Lately I’ve been disappointed that my son’s interest in reading seems to have flagged. He happily reads Tintin comics and my old Cricket magazines for hours, but the sustained attention required by a novel has been elusive. Until I started reading him Watership Down, that is. I thought this 400-page […]
Last year, during the season of Lent and Easter, I read a poem each day from the collection The Heart’s Time. I loved using this as an opportunity for reflection and contemplation. In late 2018, poking through a bookstore bargain table, I came across 365 Poems for Every Occasion, a compilation from the Academy of […]
Jane Gardam, Bilgewater (1976) The first book you read by a favorite author has a special quality. Even if there are other books by the same author that you realize are more worthy of recognition, the joy of discovery lends your “first” a lingering glow. Sometimes, the particular circumstances of finding the book are stamped […]
E.H. Shepard, Drawn from Life (1961) Ernest Shepard, best known today as the illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh and its companions, wrote two memoirs that have just been added to the lovely series of Slightly Foxed Editions. These small, colorful hardcovers, bound in the UK, are typeset in a clean, nicely balanced format that is a pleasure […]
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) The new Folio Society edition of this book is available here. A copy was received from the publisher for review consideration. No other compensation was received, and all opinions expressed are my own. It’s no secret that Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my […]
Gregory Blake Smith, The Maze at Windermere (2018) As regular readers of this blog know, I have the joy and honor of being a graduate of Carleton College (model for Blackstock College in the novel Tam Lin – click on the link for a tour). So when I learned one of my favorite professors in […]
Penelope Lively, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973) When I read Penelope Lively’s Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, I was underwhelmed. Unfortunately, I can’t remember quite why. I think it was because I could not connect emotionally with the main character, and found the novel ultimately empty and dull in spite of the literary skill of […]
Paul K. Chappell, The Art of Waging Peace (2013) After reading seven books to understand Trump’s win, I knew there still remained much to understand, but I was also hankering for some ways to enact positive change. I turned to a book that was recommended by a friend soon after the 2016 elections: The Art of […]
John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952) East of Eden is one of those books that I’ve seen mentioned by many readers as an all-time favorite (though there are a few haters as well). When the Folio Society did a poll to gather suggestions for publication, it was at the top of the list … and […]
Barbara Pym, Excellent Women (1952) As I read Excellent Women, the best-known work by the once-neglected, now widely praised English novelist Barbara Pym, I was reminded of another acclaimed comic novel that I read not long ago: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. On the surface, Amis’s hard-drinking, buffoonish misogynist Jim Dixon may seem to have […]