Blogs about Books and literature

Vincennes Review of Books 2023 is here!Key:* = Excellent, highly recommend~ = Actively bad, do not recommendFirst readsThe Book of Form & Emptiness–Ruth OzekiLove in Idleness–Charlotte Mendelson Straight Man–Richard Russo *The Complete Magazine Stories of …

Reflecting on my reading over the past year, I have found that I have been drawn to a considerable amount of historical fiction, most of which takes the lives of marginalised women as a starting …

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki Read Apr 4, 2022 - Apr 10, 2022 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This is a lovely book, filled with lovable characters and feeling. It is a novel about food, music, and …

Scholars of Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing …

Hi everyone! You may have noticed that we’ve slowed down a bit on posting, approving comments, and, well, pretty much our whole end of the deal. We’d like to say we’re just too busy and …

My new poetry pamphlet from Melos Press, The Dictionary Speaks, is now out and can be ordered post-free via this link.From the publisher’s blurb:-NICHOLAS MURRAY’S many books include poetry, two novels, critically acclaimed biographies of …

A collection of nine stories by Mark Samuels, who passed away suddenly in December 2023, after this collection had been put together. Seven of the stories are arranged as "The Gallows Langley Sequence of Tales," …

It’s always a pleasure to reconnect with writers Bloom has featured in the past—especially when they reach a career milestone. Returning bloomer Meg Pokrass spoke with us about First Law of Holes (Dzanc Books), a …

“We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.” — Anne Carson, Antigonick The fourth wall is, very simply, a testament to fictionality; ergo, the characters cannot see the audience. It’s an …

Apostle of Noncomformity “I’d say you’re always involved personally with the biography you’re writing, no matter how hard you work to muss the trail.” That’s what friend and fellow author James Marcus told me some …

An end of week recap “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” – Virginia Woolf We will be heading off …

This is my friend’s lovely cat who died recently.

A few years ago I shared my translations of poems by the Odesa-born Victor Mall (1901-1989), a former student of Kazimir Malevich who, after settling in Los Angeles, built a career as a graphic designer. …

An Almost Impossible Thing by Fiona Davison made it on to a number of Best Books of 2023 lists, but as most of them were in gardening publications with limited circulation, you’d be excused if …

Remembering Rahul: A tribute by Rohit Chopra Aniruddha Bose, Associate Professor of History at Saint Francis University, passed away on March 31, 2024 from brain cancer. Aniruddha was a remarkable person and brilliant scholar, soft-spoken …

Riddle of a Lady Anthony Gilbert published 1956 This was recommended to me after my recent post on Secretaries in Books appeared, and indeed we do have here a Queen of the Typewriter in ‘a …

Ridgeline subscribers — Hello from somewhere over the North Pole en route to England. Kevin Kelly and I are running another Walk and Talk with a classic ragtag crew of walkers. This is our …

Fool: In Search of Henry VIII’s Closest Manby Peter K. AnderssonPrinceton University Press, 2023 The posthumous image of him has been entangled with the real individual, and no one has really fully tried to disentangle …

This review was first published at Splice in October 2018. *** Meet Keiko Furukura. She has always found it difficult to conform to what her family and wider society consider “normal”. She once stopped a …

The White MollFrank L. PackardNew York: Doubleday, Doran, 1931306 pagesWalt Disney failed to interest NBC in Jimmie Dale, Alias the Gray Seal. His biographers haven't made much of this, but evidence suggests it irked. He'd …