Book reviews
Great Way to Start the Morning
Because I am a little neurotic and insecure and oscillate between wanting to be left alone to write and wanting people to remember I exist — in short, you know, a WRITER — I have a Google alert set up. Sometimes it brings me wonderful things, as it did this morning when I was alerted…
Read MoreAnd Just What, May I Ask, Are Your Intentions?
There’s an interesting piece about literary criticism in the Aug. 15, 2012 New York Times, written by literary critic Dwight Garner, called “A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical.” It’s a fun article to read, peppered as it is with just the sorts of anecdotes that make us want to read critical snark…
Read MoreWhy Penguin may be the smartest publisher around
Oh, Penguin, you’ve found my soft spot. Books, books, beautiful books, as alluring on the outside as you are on the inside. Take a gander at these beauties: Penguin has come out with special edition classics, with stunning covers created by acclaimed designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. Their web page says, “Penguin Classics presents beautiful hardcover editions…
Read MoreGlobe & Mail Review of OUR DAILY BREAD
I am humbled and grateful for the wonderful review Alan Cuymn gave OUR DAILY BREAD in the Globe & Mail. I have enormous respect for Cuymn’s work; to get such a positive review from him leaves me breathless. He says: Where is hell, exactly? Up the mountain, where it has always been. The road there…
Read MoreMy Book Addiction
The site “My Book Addiction” has posted an interview with yours truly, a review of OUR DAILY BREAD — and they’re doing a giveaway! They’re offering 4 print copies of Our Daily Bread. The Giveaway runs from today September 29,until October 6, 2011. Good luck! Let me know if you manage to snag a copy!
Read MoreBright Spots
I am so grateful for the support I’ve received for my new novel, Our Daily Bread. Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet, Duff Brenna, author of Too Cool, The Book of Maime and The Holy Book of the Beard (among others), and Dexter Palmer, author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion, have all…
Read MoreMister Pip & The Company of Angels
I haven’t posted any book reviews recently, so I thought today I’d share with you a couple of books I read recently and particularly liked: MISTER PIP by Lloyd Jones: I adored this book. Devoured it. Jones understands character like few other writers. MISTER PIP is narrated by Matilda, a young girl living on a…
Read MoreThe Art of the Subtext
This book is part of The Art of series, put out by the excellent Graywolf Press. Each book in the series examines, I am told on the back of the book, “a singular, but often assumed or neglected, issue facing the contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction or poetry. The Art of series is meant to…
Read MoreREVIEW – The Hidden Gospels – four questions, one path
I believe Alexander Shaia may have written a book which will change the way people look at the gospels entirely, and I’m not just talking about Christians. The gospels, Shaia posits, are not to be taken literally but rather they create a “Great Map of Transformation” universally relevant, regardless of background or viewpoint, even to…
Read MoreHappy Bloomsday
This is Bloomsday, of course, and literary folks are even now tromping through Dublin, commemorating June 16, 1904, the day on which Stephen Deadalus and Leopold Bloom, the two characters at the heart of James Joyce great wanderdream of a novel have their adventures. (Thursday, June 16, 1904 was, by the way, the date of…
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