Blogs about Books and literature

This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Lonsdale. On the final page of Mightier than the Sword (1912), a novel about journalists and newspapers, the protagonist dies a lonely death in the middle of …

"And there was Amelia. She sat across from me in Social Studies, and that was the class I really couldn’t pay attention in, that’s where I was a problem. Was I paying attention now?"

In Russian there is another term which is difficult to translate — Воля (volya), it means open space in all senses, i.e. a psychologically open space and landscape with no limits. So ‘volya’ is the …

​The 21st century has been referred to as “the Chinese century”, a reflection of Beijing’s increasing political, economic, and cultural influence. China’s rising prominence is making waves in the antiquarian book world, as more people …

Today's links Fintech bullies stole your kid's lunch money: Taking 60 cents out of every reduced-lunch public school dollar. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2019, 2023 Upcoming …

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.

Pam was born in 1952 and has lived in Sheffield for 51 years. She was a teacher. Reading has always been extremely important to me, although I cannot remember how I got started or recall …

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The food we eat has been shaped by many great social, economic and cultural forces. It is the result of thousands of years of agriculture, selective breeding, accidental crossing of genes and unique technological development, …

Review by Peter Reason I am sitting under the old apple tree in our Orchard on a sunny summer afternoon, looking over the meadow grass swaying in the light breeze, delighted when a little flock …

Loretta Plansky is a tennis-playing retiree in Florida; she is comfortably off but misses her deceased husband. She has a demanding family: a 98 year-old-father whose unruly behavior in assisted living is about to cost …

Apple, OpenAI, and Anthropic have three different answers.

Haven’t finished his Art of Controversy yet, but it’s a quick fun read and has some genuinely fun nuggets like this, which are still/perhaps even more relevant today: Stratagem 8This trick consists in making your …

Upon ascending the peristyle of the Louvre, one first glimpses the Venus de Milo, standing alone on her pedestal at the end of the large hall. It’s a moment of indefinable emotion, elusive and never …

Over the years, I’ve had the occasional surprise package from Canadian publisher Véhicule Press, usually from their Esplanade Books imprint. As a result, I’ve enjoyed several vicarious visits to Quebec, but today’s choice, a recent …

I miss traveling with my handy Swiss Army knife. Since the advent of strict air travel security regulations, I stopped packing my trusty multi-function tool. Recently, I learned that the original version of the utility …

Reluctant to wait for the first translations of Mircea Cărtărescu’s latest novel to start coming out in the second half of 2024, I taught myself enough Romanian to read it in the original. This “pseudo-historical …

After three centuries of frenetic modernism, transforming the world and ignoring the environment, crisis has finally arrived. The moment of reckoning has come: we, the ‘postmoderns’, have at last opened our eyes to the consequences …

In 1993, the adventurous, but no-longer extant publisher Four Walls Eight Windows released Parable of the Sower, a now classic post-apocalyptic novel by the African American writer Octavia Butler (1947-2006). In Parable, the United States …

The “acorn theory,” proposed by psychoanalyst James Hillman, says that we are each accompanied by a mystical being which—through a series of whispers, nudges, accidents, silent exhortations, and mysterious excitements—directs us towards our purpose. As …