Blogs about Books and literature

Oceania “I know what you must be thinking,” the mother says. “A 3400 to 5800? Impossible. But oh no, we know about you. Ariel wants the perfect score. His brother got the perfect score.” She …

Regeneration Pat Barker 1917 Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart. What to do with one of theirs who protests the war. With Wilfred Owen. The Eye in the Door Pat Barker The next in the series. I …

Medieval selfies and the earliest selfie-stickSelfies are by no means an exclusively modern phenomenon. During the Middle Ages artists would portray themselves, even realistically. The person seen here made two selfies of himself and even …

China After Mao by Frank Dikötter, 2022 Chinese Primer Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, and the Great Helmsman followed eight months later. After a brief tussle between factions, the Gang of Four was disbanded, …

Goethe was never actually in Copenhagen, certainly not in 1932, but it shows the extent of his reach and influence and the general knowledge of his works that a parody on his play Faust was …

The Nook Bookstore, Cedar Falls, IA (Like The Indie Bob Spot on Facebook and follow The Indie Bob Spot on Twitter)Cedar Falls, IA is one of the towns I’ve kept an eye on for a …

(Related post) "But are the men prepared to resist not just one but a possibility of two enemies? None of us expected things would turn out like this."It is 2024 and history is repeating itself. …

I reviewed David Brooks’s How to Know a Person for the TLS: David Brooks was raised in a Jewish family whose motto, he says, might have been “Think Yiddish, Act British.” He learned to be …

The winter time is over loveWhite thorns begin to bud& brown & green of freshness loveEnlivens all the woodTheres white clouds got agen the sunOne daisey open on the greenThe primrose shows its sulphur budJust …

On this spot one afternoon in the tenth century, three hundred years before the teahouse was built and our story began, a Taoist priest and a Buddhist nun were strolling together and came upon a …

As part of my Low Spend Year, I’ve been encouraging myself to try to shop within my own stash. For me, this is a great way to satisfy a shopping urge but also to see …

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. …

Homer, Odyssey 13.353-354 (tr. A.T. Murray): Glad then was the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus, rejoicing in his own land, and he kissed the earth, the giver of grain. γήθησέν τ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἔπειτα πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, χαίρων …

Barry Hughart (his surname is pronounced hew-gert) died in 2019 at the age of 85. His career as a writer of fantasy was short-lived, but his work was acclaimed. His first novel, Bridge of Birds: …

This is not my usual ALA report because the Council meetings at LibLearnX were brief and I was occupied with some legislation I’d been working on. Here are some important notes for those who are …

I was late. The minibus was already at the stop. I did something I very rarely do and broke into a run. I was the last one there. I was shown into a minibus that, …

They've announced the winner of this year's Republic of Consciousness Prize -- rewarding: "the best fiction by small presses [in the UK/Ireland] publishing 12 or fewer titles a year and are wholly independent of any …

Writing is an often solitary process, but it rarely happens alone. This brief email, which I hemmed and hawed over for seven weeks before finally dashing it off and sending it in a thoroughly uncharacteristic …

Down along the creek I remember something Her, the heron hurried away When first I breeched that last Sunday” —from “CR∑∑KS” by Bon Iver It was July of 2016, the year my youngest brother left …

Debugging A Random Carrington Generator as a gift for his daughters, Antonio thinks, which he can code in his sleep since the task consists of numbering each sentence from the complete stories of Leonora Carrington …