Today, I’m joining in the fun of A Month of Favorites with the topic, “Five Favorite Books by Theme.” For us bookaholics, what’s even better than a great book? A great book about books, stories, or reading! Here are five of my personal favorites. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie While he […]
US hardcover, Greenwillow To kick off Witch Week, we’re taking a look at Fire and Hemlock (1984), a book in which today’s date plays a very important role. It begins (after a brief prologue) when ten-year-old Polly accidentally stumbles into an ominous Halloween funeral at a nearby manor, and makes a life-changing connection to a […]
Mary Stewart, Nine Coaches Waiting (Morrow, 1959) Mary Stewart, The Ivy Tree (Morrow, 1962) Mary Stewart, The Moon-Spinners (Morrow, 1963) Mary Stewart, This Rough Magic (Morrow, 1964) It’s always a great pleasure to discover an author whose books have somehow passed you by, especially if there are plenty of them. Such is the case […]
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Broadway Books, 1998) Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Knopf, 2012) At about the same time in the mid-nineties, two very different people — a successful, 44-year-old author and family man, and a 26-year-old aspiring writer “with […]
After a brief hiatus, we’re back to Jane Austen with the third part of a series looking at different illustrated editions of her six novels. (Click here for Part One, and here for Part Two.) Today’s volumes under consideration are not as striking as some of the others, but they have a quiet charm of […]
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, is “Top Ten Classic Books,” or variations thereof. My favorite classic books don’t really need any more publicity from me (e.g. Great Expectations, Twelfth Night, Leaves of Grass), so I decided to make a list of classic books I love that aren’t […]
This is Part Two of my series covering different illustrated editions of the six novels of Jane Austen. For Part One, click here. My earliest Austen acquisition was the 2007 Folio Society edition of Emma, illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat, which I purchased as part of my membership renewal. This is one of three matching Austen […]
In my book collecting this year, I went a little nuts. I already owned Jane Austen’s Emma in the most recent Folio Society edition (illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat), but a few months ago the FS published a new edition of Pride and Prejudice with fabulous illustrations by Elena and Anna Balbusso and I just had […]
Robin McKinley’s author bio in her early books used to say that she kept track of her life according to what she was was reading in various locations; she traveled around quite a bit as a child because her father was in the navy. I didn’t have such an exotic upbringing, but I find that […]
Eugene Onegin The Handmaid’s Tale The artwork of Anna and Elena Balbusso first caught my eye in the Folio Society catalog, with their stunning illustrations for two very different books, Alexander Pushkin’s classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin and Margaret Atwood’s modern dystopian nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale. Then I noticed that they were the cover artists for […]