lection
home authors titles dates links about "Read at whim!" – Randall Jarrell15 september 2024
The late Adam Zagajewski's Another Beauty is about artistic creation and aesthetic experience under trying circumstances: the conjunction of youthful callowness and a government determined to repress all forms of joy. read more
4 september 2024
Joseph Balsamo (1853) was a well-known novel in its day, part of the Dumas père stable of properties. I wondered why it was taking me so long to creep through the book on my Kindle. I then found the novel in my library - in five hefty blue-bound volumes, sumptuously produced by publisher Louis Conard in 1939. It runs at least 1,700 pages. No wonder I'd sit up well into the night and then have my Kindle tell me I'd only read one percent of the text. read more
27 august 2024
I was scrolling through lists of classic true-crime books. One that kept coming up, but that I'd never read (or heard of?) was Steve Jackson's Monster (1998). The lists aren't lying; Monster is a major achievement. It is disturbing as all hell, but if you're drawn to true crime, you're hardly expecting a classic of the genre not to be. read more
17 august 2024
I resolved to review more new children's books here, and ten months later, I'm following up with Kate DiCamillo's Orris and Timble: The beginning. read more