Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers 238-240

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Books for Readers # 238

February  22 , 2025

 

 

Detail of cover of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle; Leila Slimani; Anne McCaffrey; movie poster for movied of
James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice;Cherrie Moraga; Percival Everett; Edith Wharton

 

CONTENTS

Back Issues

Announcements

Book Reviews

Good Reading Online

Especially for Writers

Obituaries

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Unless otherwise noted, reviews are by MSW.

 

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

The Post Man Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Democracy Needs Religion by Hartmut Rosa Reviewed by Joe Chuman

James by Percival Everett

The Blessing Way, Dance Hall of the Dead , Listening Woman,  Ghostway,
by Tony Hillerman

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Unknown Man # 89 by Elmore Leonard

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

Absolution by Alice McDermott

Shadows of Tyranny by Ken McGoogan Reviewed by Fay Martin

Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of A Queer Motherhood by Cherrie Moraga

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

Dreams Like Thunder by Diane Simmons

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

Wings of Fire: the Dragonet Prophecy by Tui T. Sutherland

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

 

Books for Readers is still soliciting reading suggestions and reviews of all kinds of books. I tend to review older books that I missed along the way and books from small and indie presses that deserve more attention. We desperately need alternatives to the handful of remaining (and way too powerful) Big Book Reviews. These publications, like all of us, have limited angles of vision. The antidote, IMHO, is lots of places sharing other world views and ideas. And YOU, dear reader, are invited to send me reviews (from little blurb length to substantial essays). Spread the word on what you're reading.

I am coming close to the end of Kenneth C. Davis's Great Short Books: A Year of Reading--BrieflyI don't take many classes these days, and it's alwasy a pleasure to have some guidance: I had read a lot of the short books recommended here, but there were a lot that were wondereful and new to me (See We Have Always Lived in the Castle in this issue). Quite a few I reread (Death in Venice) and am so glad I did. Things you read as a twenty-somthing have an entirely different quality fifty years later. For one thing, even though I was smarter/sharper in those days, I was always panicked that I wouldn't "get" something famous. Now, I have read so much and experienced so much more, that I actually read with more facility, at least partly because I trust myself as a reader and am--dare I say it-- more relaxed. People who know me, like my husband, would snort over me claiming ever to be relaxed, but as I reader I really am, and thus, I woudl warrant, a better reader, more open to what is happening with the little black marks strewn across the page or screen.

Again, I know I was quicker then, and I certainly could hear bettr and see better, but reading is to one extent or another opening yourself to another person's viewpoint, concerns, passions.

 

I have notes here on two Margaret Atwood novels, Alias Grace aned Surfacing (suggested by Kenneth C. Davis's Great Short Books). My first notes begin with my question to myself about why I don't love Margaret Atwood. I'm much more moved by the work of Alice Munro, the late and now disgraced Nobel prize winner whose husband molested her daughter and she apparently never took action against him. I've been in a number of heated conversations about Munro, and it isn't that I have so much sympathy with her, but I do feel more from her work than Atwood's.

They are both mostly bleak and and often depressign, but Munro's depressing stories usually leave me (mysteriously) uplifted. I keep reading Atwood matrial, and I recognize that I am intererested, and I finish the books, but I am not sorry to get away.

 

 

 

 

REVIEWS

 

 

Dreams Like Thunder by Diane Simmons

 

This wonderful short book is at once an affectionate and humorous look at a lonely, highly imaginative eleven year old and the richly rendered world of a high desert farm in Eastern Oregon. It is, in fact, so eastern that the nearest city is Boise, Idaho. There is haying with sounds and smells and black dust circles around the workers' eyes, and there our girl Alberta'a delight in the men who are hired to do the haying. She loves her father, a World War II ace pilot and flying instructor, who works with his men.

Alberta's mother, on the other hand, is not happy on the farm. She was an Alabama Southern belle who finds herself in the middle of nowhere living next door to her mother-in-law who is tough and religious and does not agree about how to raise a lady.

There is a strong story line centered around the coming visit of Alberta's mother's cousin and her daughter. The girl is roughly Alberta's age, and Alberta is feverish with eagerness to have a companion besides her grandmother with whom she quarrels comfortable, and her mother, who spends much of each day lying in the sun with aluminum foil disks on her eyes.

The close third-person narration alternates character sketches of the people around Alberta with splendid moments of being in the out-of-doors and also a string of fantasies that she spins until a better idea comes along. We ride with Alberta as she plans what she and her much-anticipated cousin Martha Lee will do. and she makes up stories of how they will become inseparable and become stewardesses and fly to Paris.

While she is planning where to take Martha Lee, she has a run-in with the "not-all-there" neighbor man who she is afraid is going to shoot her with his ever-present gun while she is walk-on around the fort she built herself. There is so much hope and anticipation built around the arrival of the guests, that the reader of too many novels like me assumes some disaster is coming: child molestation or the guests will cancel or Martha Lee once she arrives will be impossible.

But this is a Diane Simmons world that is more grounded in real life than ninety nine per cent of the other writers you'll read–and grounded in the power of real life imagination as well as real life disappointments.The guests arrive, the cousin is afraid of farm animals but feisty in her own odd-ball way.The girls spend their time together exploring and spying, and eventually writing fake notes about the life and death of a woman they only know from her tombstone. And these fake notes are published in the local paper by a copy-hungry editor!

I love the play between the real and the imagined her.

In the background are stories from the pioneer generation that does not seem so long ago. There is the murder of the indigenous people that is told as a legend from the far past, as is the treatment of Chinese workers in the local gold mines. Anger and revenge are contained and narrow, and largely off stage in Alberta's world.

The ending, with its hilarious plot twist but no disaster, is priceless.

 

I'd like to offer heartfelt thanks to Red Hen Press for bringing this book back into print.

 

 

The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani

Well, this one was not fun. The first line tells you that some young children have been murdered, the working mother's most wrenching nighmare. The rest of the novel is a speculation, painful, moving--and I have to say brilliant--about why it happened. I had to stop and go read something else for a while. The Nanny of the novel and her breakdown make a solid study of what might have happened to this woman plagued by psychological discord, a brutal husband who dies and leaves her destitute. She doesn't have the tools to deal with a difficult child of her own, but she discovers she can carre extremely well for other peoples' children. So much is stacked agains her: her passion of her charges, for example. All this is extraordinarily well imagined by Slimani.

Even so, at various points, I kept pulling myself back a little and saying, Yes, but you, author, are imagining this–why are you imagining this instead of imagining something different?

The story is a non-fantasy horror story, and the horror of the victims and the killer is presented as extremely close to being the same thing.

And of course Slimani doesn't even attempt to capture the birth mother's horror which is left as an hour long scream. So I find myself focused on the emotional and technical brilliance. It is either than the story is too much for me or perhaps because Slimani is not quite opening herself to the horror of the character most like herself, the mother.

Well, I wouldn't say don't read it, but don't expect to have fun.

 

 

 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Art by Thomas Ott

 

This is a kind of domestic horror, too, not exactly supernatural, but not quite this world either. It was about Shirley Jackson's last book, I believe, and it is wildy creepy-- and very, very funny. The narrator is supposed to be 18, but sounds like one of the 12 year old prodigies like Frankie in Member of the Wedding.

The situation is that Merricat (Mary Katherine) lives with her older sister Constance and great uncle Julian in a big house. A few years earlier, the other members of the rather aristocratic and snobbish family died in an arscenic poisoning. The house sits just outside a little Vermont town like the setting for "The Lottery" and other of Jackson's works.

Merricat's duty is to walk to town twice a week for groceries. The townspeople stare and sneer and recite little nasty verses about poisoning. Older sister Constance won't leave the house after her traumatic trial for murder, at which she was acquitted. There are, of course, surprises and secrets, and the main story line is how everything in Merricat and Constance and Julian's orderly lives is overturned abter Cousin Charley comes to visit and tries to make changes, particularly to seduce dear Constance. He is the destroyer, in Merricat's opinion, of a very happy household.

There is a fire, and the whole town comes out to watch.. The fire fighters put the fire out because, they say, that's what firemen do, but the townspeople trash the house. It's all pretty appalling, and there are no reallly admirable people on any side. Maybe Merricat's pet Jonas the cat, and from time to time Uncle Julian. But because of the seductive and amusing voice of Mary Katherine, we are totally cheering for her side, however well we know her by the end of the novel.

There is not much nice or uplifting about Jackson's world–but it is always somehow a shivery delight to be there.

A 2010 NYTimes welcome to the Library of American editon of Jackson's work gives a good discussion of Jackson's work:   https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/books/review/Rafferty-t.html

 

 

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

I can't quite puzzle out my reaction to Atwood's work. Respect and admiration, and I'm always sufficiently entertained to keep reading, but I don't feel breathless. I feel about it rather the way I feel about competent nonfiction: worthwhile, and I'm learning something, but there's no love. There is something missing for me in her characters, although she is far too good a writer for me to be perfectly clear about what it is.

In this novel, based on a real double murder in the middle of the nine teeth century, at the time when in the USA the Civil War was about to break out, a woman named Grace Mark is convicted of murder. She is an immigrant servant who has lost touch with her family and has fallen in with a man who instigates the murders and is hanged. Grace is saved from hanging by a clever lawyer, then spends thirty years in prison and insane asylums before being released. She gets a modicum of a happy ending. She is also the only character in the book who-- mysterious and possibly split-personality as she may be--has a kind of thoughtful dignity that makes her attract rive to this reader at least.

The other main character is Dr. Simon Jordan, a young man who is ambitious about starting his own treatment of the insane in a (he hopes) profitable institution. He has Ideas, and he is studying Grace to make his mark in the eyes of the world. He is sexist and classist and, more damning for a character in a novel, fatuous. The details are always interesting and elaborate, but I don't like most of the people very much.

That may be my problem. Simon is a twit, Simon's landlady is at once a victim and unpleasantly whining and clinging, the murderer McDermott is a brute, Grace's various bosses are beyond selfish, and her erstwhile friend Jeremy the peddler never stays in one role long enough to develop much--actually, he seems wasted to me altogether.

Even Grace's friend Mary, who lives in her imagination, may have a vengeful side. None of those things are impossible in fiction as far as me identifying with the characters--I am as fond of Elmore Leonard's assassins and jerks as I am of his heroes-- but in this book, except for Grace herself, there are mostly people to repel you.

 

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

This 1973 novel is again solid and well crafted and certainly superior to most popular literature. Surfacing is about the lives of women in the nineteen fifties and early sixties--catering to men you despise, for example. Sexual frustrations is always the fault of the women. The women do the cooking and nurturing with no one even noticing.

Atwood, known first as a prolific poet, wrote this at the age of 33 or so--a very young woman, very angry about the changes in the world and the bad influence of Americans--among whom the main character identifies a lot of Canadians. She says a lot about the wilderness and respect for the animals and land, but doesn't say much about the people who preceded the French and British.

Two couples come to a lake in northern Quebec to see the cabin where the narrator grew up half of every year half the year. Her parents are dead, or rather, her mother is dead and her father is probably dead,but possibly not--having perhaps gone crazy and run off into the "bush." The narrator does this herself at the end of the book--has either a spiritual epiphany or a breakdown. She runs from the people she came with. She won't walk into human made enclosures or eat food in cans.. In very sixties fashion, though--and of course the sixties really lasted at least till the fall of Saigon in 1975--insanity is often a synonym for extreme freedom (thinking of the works of R.D.Laing who defined schizophrenia as “an adaptive response to a chaotic and disordered society.”)

She runs into the bush, rips up her clothes, burns her memorabilia, refuses to go back to civilization, then sees the ghosts of her parents. Finally, she decides they would prefer her and her fetus (about 48 hours along) to survive, and she begins to move into the future.

I believe we are supposed to cheer her on, but don't really trust her decisions.

Of course, you keep reading: Atwood is brilliant, she generally writes exquisitely, she really knows something about the flora and fauna and weather of the Canadian north. She is super intelligent. So I'm still left wondering why I don't love her work.

 

 

James by Percival Everett

One of my favorite ways to evaluate a book is to consider whether the ending is as good as the promise of the beginning. Percival Everett's popular James aces the test. The ending fits what has come before, and is satisfying and well earned. I'm glad Percival Everett's career--long, serious, and literary--has taken off in a big way.

James has a lot of nice touches like catching a giant catfish for dinner by wiggling your fingers and almost getting your arm swallowed; the clever use of the traveling minstrels and the Duke and the King from Huckleberry Finn. All fun, exciting, clever. The one thing that I am not quite satisfied by was the oddity of having the slaves when they are with each other, speak a kind of standard twentieth century Midwestern newscaster English. I totally believe and liked the idea that the enslaved people exaggerated their dialect in the presence of the "massas," and I certainly liked at least for this story that Jim/James could read, and did read Voltaire, John Locke, Rousseau and others.

But Huck and the various crackers speak dialect, so why don't the poor black people? I guess I should just accept the magical realism of this, as I accepted James freeing a whole breeding farm full of enslaved people. It did stimulate me to wonder what indeed the enslaved people DID speak to one another-- I imagine it full of figures of speech and metaphors but not plain-Jane newscaster English.

But that's all quibbling. The relationship between Jim/James and Huck was wonderful, and the action and adventure, and the skill of how he ended it.

 

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

So then I had to reread Huckleberry Finn. It was my first reread since what? high school? Early twenties? Much easier reading than my last try--how did getting old and slow make me a better reader of nineteenth century books? Maybe I'm just more relaxed and experienced at the complex senstens.Just more relaxed? More experienced I guess.

The book whipped me back and forth between real enjoyment and admiration and being appalled at some of Twain's choices--Tom Sawyer and his cruel practical joking is of a piece with the good-old-boy American men that one has come to loathe. Anyhow, all the life on the river was wonderful, and yes the frequent use of the the n-word grated and weighed on me.

A little superficial survey found the book defended by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jamelle Bouie. Percival Everett thanks Twain in his intro to James. Interesting indeed that these people see the strength of Jim's character.

There is also the excellent Toni Morrison essay on Huck Finn which I had a lot of trouble getting I citation for--I found some professors .pdf of the essay, and Google's little robot assistant asserts it's from the NYTimes book review, but I'm not convinced.

At any rate, Morrison spends time on Jim as a good father to Huck, and other remarks that make me wonder if this is where Everett got the idea for his big reveal in James.

The King and the Duke were so nasty and exaggerated (I hope) and the insane caricatured "Southren" Grangefords all getting slaughtered by their enemies. What a brutal parody of Southern gentry that was.

The final fifteen or twenty per cent though, the return of Tom Sawyer, was appalling. At least at first. I didn't like the elaborate "fun," and I didn't' like Tom, and I didn't like Huck's knuckling under to Tom let alone how they torture Jim in chains and completely disrupt the Phelps family with rats and snakes and spiders.

Tom is really a brute, who enjoys imaginative torture. The ending--Tom getting shot and his wound infected, Jim sacrificing himself back to slavery, he thinks, for sticking with the sick Tom, and then the reveal that Jim has been freed, and Tom knew it--yes--Twain's novel is deep and complex, and he was making a living by his humor--but I'm still left confounded. Which Morrison says is what literature's supposed to do to/for us. Well, maybe.

 

Toni Morrison's essay on "The Adventures Huckleberry Finn"  , an introduction to a 1996 edition of Huck Finn, is extremely worth reading. I have a link to it here.

 

START DOWN

 

 

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence --oh, I do like Edith's world and her scenes. She isn't as subtle as her BF Henry James (I don't think he felt the same about her–felt her as more than a little overwhelmingly, likely to come and sweep him up for a motor car ride). But for all James' dedication to scenes and the delicate precision of moral distinctions in the class he wrote about, Wharton does her scenes at least as well. The first part of The Age of Innocence is stunning–and there's something about the authorial voice looking back on all that, the seventies (??) And what it was like, how different the "now," which is teens and twenties of the twentieth century–a comfortable guide, her making fun of the old protestant New York aristocracy with its bad values and terrible limitations on women– and how many of the affluent and wealthy women managed to be masters of their world in spite of it.

Newland Archer is our guide, both to the comme il faut, and to his own criticisms of it and his little nudges at the inner envelope in progressive art and literature, sort of. The middle is still good, and the end could have gone various ways, but is satisfying in a way just for it's open-endedness. Again, this book, in conversation with so much of James, might be a good introduction to reading him because so much is spoken just a little louder, just a little more willing to dramatize vulgarity and speak clearly: the very fact that Archer lets us know he has sown his wild oats–very unvictgorian (and this is after Victoria) to say it so openly. The Master never would have.

But E.W., especially as she is older, doesn't kowtow to any one, and this is a really good story: the young man who thinks he is in love with the best possible example of old New York, then the arrival of the Countess Olenska who has left her husband and doesn't quite get all the rules of society in New York. She is Archer's intended's cousin, and love and passion ensue, but careful boundaries are set. In many ways, old New York, but particularly win the game, indeed most of the hands. But of course, at the same time, it is a very different world when the story ends

 

 

 

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

I thought at first I was mostly reading it in hopes of getting some background on NYC around the turn of the twentieth century, but the story got better and better as it went along, as, perhaps Cobb was learning how to write a novel? He was an experience nonfiction writer, famously the child of a father who was a founding member of the Beats (friend of Kerouac and Ginzberg).

Anyhow, he wrote a lot of nonfiction, but this was his first novel, and it isn't bad in the first half, but a little clunky, heavy handed somehow (I'm not describing this well). But then he gets his sea legs as it were, and he has some excellent characters: a genius child psychiatrist Laszlo Kreizler (the alienist ) and a journalist narrator John Schuyler Moore who is smart but not that smart, and active and an excellent guide to the story and to the watering holes and other delights of the city. Also part of the detecting crew is Sarah Howard who wants to be a police officer, and Theodore Roosevelt himself, who is commissioner of police at the time, which is just before the war in Cuba.

Roosevelt, the alienist, and Moore the narrator were all in school more or less at the same time, and there are very bad cops and lots of "boy-whores" and girls, gangsters and blatant corruption, and then a serial killer who preys on the boys and does disgusting things to their bodies. The Alienist is determined to chase him down by figuring out his psychology, and this is elaborate and mostly fun, and ends with an excellent climactic scene on the parapet of the Reservoir that has been replaced by the New York Public library and Bryant Park.

Looking back at my reading experience, a day later, I realize I really liked it. Not that it needs my recommendation–it was a big best seller in 1994.

 

 

 

The Post Man Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

 

Much better than I perhaps expected– mid thirties, Depression novel, first big best selling (And "Banned in Boston") noir novel. Cain with Chandler and Hammett the quintessential of t he genre, and perhaps even more the movies of their books. Cain another alcoholic, only a couple of really superior books (This one and Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. )

I agreed with the general praise of its directness, its sharp dialogue. Characters with little in the way or moral appreciation, but attractive for all that: a barren landscape and national poverty in the background. Sex isn't graphic as far as action goes, but there is no question there is a lot going on in bed, and Cora a couple of times says "Rip me!" Which is shocking, and not clear if we're talking blouses or rough sex-intercourse, and the ambiguity is pretty titillating.

Cora and Frank's plans to kill her husband are sloppy and never for a moment look likely to succeed–they try twice, and there's a complicated and hardly believable trial and clever lawyer's activities, and then Cora and Frank at once in love and on the constant verge of turning on one another, and a final genuine accident that ends up with our narrator on death row.

Again, I don't think the plotting bears a lot of examination, but the momentum and sexual passion make it– I won't say sing-- but surely rock and roll. I was surprised by how much I liked it, even though I stopped for a whiel in he middle because I was simultaneously reading The Perfect Nanny which I admired (this is getting to be an old story with my response to novels) and shrank from in horror. Too many doomed people. But this one was like warming your hands by an amoral brilliant flame.

 

 

 

 

Unknown Man # 89 by Elmore Leonard

Back when he was writing, even if it didn't sound like writing– two alcoholics, working on it, some charming bad guys, one who discovered patience in prison, but waits a little too long. Two grifters from New Orleans who really love to eat. Well, maybe it's a semi-legitimate scam, finding people who don't know they own stocks. The good-hearted but drifting hero, a woman he falls in love with. Scams, nicely done violence that happens at appropriate intervalswith reason (even if the reason is only that the character really likes to kill people). Seventies, shot guns are the power weapons (1977). This one is not stripped to nothing, is a lot of fun. He was still really enjoying it here.

 

 

 

 

Absolution by Alice McDermott

Highly praised, highly recommended, and I really really dlikked her Charming Billy. This is another roundabout study of a character, Charlene, a Vietnam engineer's wife in the early sixties, a do-gooder, mother, iconoclast who mutters her image-breaking remarks and breaks rules always sub rosa. There's a lot about Americans in Saigon and the pretty appalling attitudes of men toward women and of women toward themselves and each other. Two women tell it, a protegee newly wed of Charlene's and Charlene's daughter. There is a lot about parenting: about miscarriages and marriages and adoption, and the destruction that comes with imperialism. It's also about the Vietnam war and a lot more. I thoroughly admire the in-the-roundness of the story telling. I liked Charming Billy better, but this is pretty impressive.

 

 

 

 

Waiting in the Wings: Portrait of A Queer Motherhood by Cherrie Moraga

 

This is a recent twenty-fifth anniversary edition of a book with a new forward by the author and an epilog by the young man who is the baby in the story--which is for all of its claiming to be about "a queer motherhood," the story of a writer who gefts pregnant late, has a premature baby who spends 3 grueling months in the hospital living through blockages and infection and major surgeries. The trials of Moraga and her partner getting in and out of the hospital (this was twety five years ago, and Moraga's emotional and mental struggles with wht it means to be a mother re made specific in that way of good writers--she's a butch lesbian and a chicana who feels strongly part of her extended familia-- and then the stress on the women's relationship let alone Moraga's ability to write-- once Rafael Angel is home-- are so basic and so familiar to any woman who loves her child but is appalled at how she has lost her privacy, her inner life, all of the things she (I'm thinking me here) had that made her who she is/was-- all of this is deeply familiar whtever the interesting context of Moraga and her work and her friendship with pefople in the feminist/queer arts world (people like Audre Lorde)-- all in the context of the height of the AIDS crisis.

Anyhow, it is marvelously specific in its portrait of southern Californian Chicano strivers but also of that art world Moraga is a part of, and at the saem time so relatable to anyone who ever had a baby or was the other parent of a baby.

 

 

 

 

The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

This is a reread–the book all crumbly in its cheap paperback edition. My first reading years ago I can remember looking for the good guys–the gnostics didn't denigrate women in person on in theology, the orthodox were rigid, anti-woman, hierarchical; the gnostics were (rather like Buddhists) inward looking for the spiritual; the orthodox were more interested in political control of their adherents and clergy-administered religion. The gnostics then were rebels, refused to accept the orthodox orders and the orthodox canon of new testament books. BUT–it turns out–the gnostics also were elitist (only the so-called spiritually "mature" got the whole thing), and they had a weird cosmology with the "jealous" God of the old-testament a god created to create, the demiurge, with the real powers behind that one. Shockingly unchristian to me, and too elaborate. While the orthodox, the "catholic" church was building a real structure that would last and has for millennia, and a structure with a simple confession that included anyone who wanted to be part of it. Maybe the big difference is that at this reading I'm beginning a separate myself from "teams."

It certainly complicates what Christianity started out to be–the Vatican must have haed it in when the scrolls were found in 1945 (the "Nag Hammadi Library" of scrollsl in Coptic transaltions), sold, resold, and finally publicized in a facsimile edition between 1972 and 1977. The thought is that some monks, when ordered gy the hierarchy to get rid of all non-canonic books, preserved tese scrolls in a jar and hid them in a cave. Pagels looks at all this pretty thoroughly for a small book and makes some comparisons of the extremely different gnostic texts to psychotherapy– and to the idea that "many gnostics, like many artists, search for interior self-knowledge as the key to 'understanding universal truths" (p. 161-62 New York: Vintage 1981).

Liberating for me, to get a sense of how it all went down, how differently people interpreted Jesus.

 

START UP FROM HERE

Shadows of Tyranny by Ken McGoogan Reviewed by Fay Martin

Ken McGoogan’s seventeenth book, Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship, is a ‘cautionary non-fiction’ approach to capturing the current political reality.  When he wrote it, Trump had not yet mused and then doubled down on the idea of Canada becoming the USA’s 51st state. He had not yet referred to Canada’s Prime Minister as Governor, and promised to annex Canada through economic war. In fact, Trump was not yet running for office of President of the United States when this book hit the shelves in August 2024.

So it is a chillingly prescient book.McGoogan  paints the pre-WW2 world in detail, exposing alarming parallels with the current growth of demagoguery and authoritarianism around the world, including in the USA. He does not articulate the obvious. He does not finger wag. He does not explore the intricacies of fascism vs Stalinism vs communism. But his characters do. 

Somebody has said and been cited that history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. This is a book of rhymes. McGoogan follows the political figures of pre-WW2 and the war as it unfolded in full context, but he also includes the supporting and contrasting cast of players. Central among them are writers – journalists, novelists, dystopians, poets, playwrights, including Orwell top of the list had he not died so young, Andre Malraux, Hanna Arendt, Drien la Rochelle, Mathew Halton, Dorothy Thompson, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Martha Gelhorn (twice the man Hemingway was, his favourite non-favourite.) McGoogan thinks that how reality is named determines how it is experienced, and writers therefore play a direct and very significant role in how reality unfolds. He is unjudgmental about how the perception of wordsmiths changed over time when it is based on engagement. He has no mercy for writers who covered the war or the precedents to war from the hotel bar.

McGoogan humanizes the cost of war to not only the soldiers, but also to those who loved them, and those on whose land they fought, whose food they ate, whose lives they displaced. And those who played the back-stage roles, often female: the nurses, the spies, the resistance workers, the code-breakers, those who stepped up to keep society running in the absence of a generation of men and of focus on everyday necessity.

If there is an overarching narrative in this book, it is the importance of words in structuring resistance. McGoogan draws reality in stark outline with fire-hose intensity. His commentary is limited to the occasional ‘Ya think?’ wink that invites the reader to make what they will of the facts he has delivered, including finding contrary or ameliorating facts if they are so inclined. He expects of readers what he expected of writers who covered the war, that they leave the safety of the hotel bar and venture into the dangerous complexity of the larger world.

McGoogan predicts the rhyme of history in early reactions to the rise of authoritarianism – appeasement, not taking risk seriously, confusion between what the true evil is that needs to be confronted, a political Tower of Babel as evil embeds. His epilogue is entitled: Where is our Churchill?  Where indeed. 

If this book makes you think (as it did me) that maybe we are on the brink of war again, you might also be interested in (re)reading Vera Britten’s Testament of Youth, or seeing a chilling film adaptation of the same name, available free on CBCGem.ca. Britten decries the First World War’s ruination of a generation of men, from the perspective of a privileged woman who nursed wrecked soldiers from both sides of the war, in repurposed aristocratic homes in Britain and in the mud of France. She, too, believes in resistance and resilience through words. Writers of our time should take heed.

 

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Another Great Short Book--this one I had trouble getting into this with its simple sentences and the narrator Meursault's flat affect. He mostly seems to want to be precisely honest about what he doesn't feel, or perhaps more precisely doesn't feel the way he is supposed to feel.

The story centers this in his mother's death. he doesn't mourn her, although he goes through an all night vigil for her at the Home where she lived and died. He drinks coffee with an employee of the Home and offers to share a smoke with him. There's a an intense even hallucinatory vividness about these small actions. Everything is moments of being, the power of the senses--especially the Algerian sun.

Camus was 29 or so when this first novel was published, very committed to his lack of passions, his semi-scientific nouveau roman focus on things. He was awarded the Nobel at 44, died early, all that, but the thing no one says is that he was brilliant but also very young. Life's meanings feel different to me--a grandmother! I'm perhaps looking for the wise old women.

The story, though, is compact and vigorous. Meursault-- the foreigner, the stranger, the outsider (as the various translations of the title go, spends a day with a brutal friend and the women in their lives. There are altercations with some Arabs who are after Meursault's friend who beat up their sister when he was going with her.

But it is Meursault who becomes feverish from sun and probably from a desire to feel what it is like to kill a man, who a man.

And from there, thee story is about law, prison life, the bizarre courtroom practices of the French in Algeria, and Meursault's observations and insights. He is convicted, mostly based on his lack of expressed feeling at his mother's funeral, and his execution looms. It ends with him yelling at an annoying priest and having a sudden understanding of anger and pleasure--as if the imminence of death by guillotine makes him finally wake up to life.

The lack to interest in the murdered man niggles at me, but I was happy to see Meursault awaken.

 

 

Four by Tony Hillerman

The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman

This was the first of he Leaphorn novels, and the main character is really a white academic whose name I've already forgotten. This is the one where the editor encouraged Hillerman to enhance Joe Leaphorn. Good decision. Very exciting, believable minor characters, and Leaphorn figuring out what's going on in one place and the white academic in big trouble in another place. Good action, and a complicated plot (supposedly a strong suit of Hillerman's).

A lot hangs on a character known as "the big Navajo" whose hat is stolen and whose Navajo isn't as good as his English. This is interesting, as are the ceremonies. But Berg (the white guy) is an unbelievable jerk vis-a-vis women. I think Hillerman (at least back in 1970) would have said he was supposed to be, but it really irked my liver–as long as the guy is escaping from a sealed room and getting shot, he's fine, but I wanted to puke over him and his love interest, whose main role is to be The Girl.

 

Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman

This Hillerman was darker, with the deaths of boys and a creepy anthropologist on a dig. But Joe Leaphorn is good again. He does a lot of tracking, and Hillerman makes it interesting. Leaphorn gets wounded in an interesting way.

There were plot details I didn't bother to go back and work out or even really understand. For me, it's the narrative, of course, and with these books, a kind of anthropological surven and even a travelogue: learning about this place, enjoying the religious distinctions between the Navajo and the Zuñi–and the tensions between the tribes.

I did look up Navajo commentary on Hillerman's novels, and in the beginning, it was generally positive, but I thinkk subsequent generations have been more critical.

 

 

Ghostway by Tony Hillerman

Finished another Hillerman last night: Ghostway (?) This one starred Jim Chee, and I liked its efficiency and landscapes and, again, the Navajo lore, but wish I'd read about Chee's arrival first.

 

Listening Woman by Tony Hillerman

I stopped at least temporarily with the t.v. show and decided to try Hillerman's novels. I read this one as an experiment, out of order.

They are short books, and you see his writing style improving rapidly. I probably like best an easy glimpse, not overly challenging, into the world of the Navajo and other Americans who preceded the rest of us.

The last part of this novel is all physical action with Joe Leaphorn struggling with bad guys and a monstrous attack dog and caverns and fire and explosives and guns.

It's smoothly written, and hard not to like Joe with his low key wit and frequent holding back what he's thinking. In this tory, an offshoot of the American Indian Movement has turned to terrorism.

There are nice distinctions between tribes, and I think Hillerman handles the spiritual material with great respect and realism. The setting in the Southwest is lovely.

I'm pleased to discover a new series.

 

 

 

 

 

Democracy Needs Religion by Hartmut Rosa Reviewed by Joe Chuman

Maintaining that our democracy needs religion seems an idea ill-fitted to our times. In the West at least, religion is not faring well. Western Europe is arguably a post-religious society, with many churches and cathedrals converted to museums or concert halls. In the last several decades, the United States seems to be following Europe in a move toward creating a secular society, witnessed by the rapidly expanding ranks of the unaffiliated. More than 28% of Americans now assert that they do not belong to a house of worship, and this cohort of "nones" includes growing numbers of agnostics and atheists. "Nones" now exceed the percentage of Americans who are Catholics and evangelical Protestants, making it the largest group on the religious spectrum. The loss of adherents may be a factor in pushing many conservative religionists to the extremes. Christian nationalism is on the rise, and the politicized evangelical churches have been among Donald Trump's most stalwart supporters, without which he could not have attained the White House. If anything, contemporary religion proves itself to be a militant destroyer of democracy, making the title of the book under review at least ironic, if not provocative. Reactionary religion has had a long history of supporting fascist regimes, and it is ominously happening under the direction of Donald Trump. Moreover, rampant sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been a global phenomenon, undermining its claims to moral authority. And when it comes to abuse, Catholicism does not have a monopoly. The religions have a long, tragic history of complicity with the forces of darkness. Among those whose ethics are guided by decency, religion in our times does not have a good name. The Left has had a long history of condemning religion for its collusion with retrograde political movements.

Democracy Needs Religion by the German sociologist, Hartmut Rosa, is a small book that encompasses large ideas. At fewer than 70 pages, it is the revised and extended publication of a lecture that Rosa gave to the Diocese of Würzburg, Germany in 2022. Rosa's primary concept is what he calls "resonance," and it is the focal idea around which he critiques the malaise of modernity. Resonance is a concept central to Rosa's work and serves as a basis for an earlier work with that title. Democracy Needs Religion briefly applies Rosa's theory of resonance to the revival of democracy, especially in the interpersonal quarters of contemporary life.

Borrowing from Karl Marx and the theorists of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Rosa identifies alienation as the primary discontent of modern society. Resonance, which describes a change of consciousness, is proffered as the response to that alienation caused by the structure and rushed tempo of contemporary life.

In Rosa's analysis, society can be described as in a state of "frenetic standstill." Perpetual growth without direction is its prevailing dynamic. As Rosa notes,

"[frenetic standstill] is meant to imply two things. On the one hand, society is accelerating. Indeed, it is frantically rushing ahead; for structural reasons, in fact, it must rush in this way to maintain its structure. On the other hand, however, it has become mired or sclerotic. It has lost the sense of its historical (forward) momentum."

Rosa refers to this condition as "dynamic stabilization," and relentless growth lies at its core. Such accelerated growth, he asserts, is necessary to maintain the status quo. As such, modern society needs to expend more and more energy to maintain existing conditions. The demands built into the structures of late capitalism ensure that we produce and have more: more energy, more expansion, more productivity, more inventiveness, more things, more wants, all moving at a forever accelerating pace. As Rosa concludes,

"I find it truly absurd at this point to speak abstractly of growth without indicating where this growth should be achieved..."

"Even more absurd is the fact that we, as humans, don't even want all this growth because we are greedy and insatiable. We need it because, without growth, we could no longer sustain the entire existing social structure. Growth and acceleration are driven by fear, not by greed."

The relentlessness of accelerated growth results in consequences at both the macro social level and in the lives and consciousness of individuals. Environmental destruction is no doubt its most salient consequence on the planetary level. With regard to the fabric of social relations, Rosa asserts that the condition we are in renders more aggressive our relationship to the world and to each other. "Our relationship to the world is aggressive; we are always in attack mode or alarm mode." Industries, the extractive industries as the prime examples, are acting more and more recklessly in the search for oil and rare earth elements. This aggressive frenzy of perpetual expansion, Rosa asserts, informs our politics. He argues that it is the dynamic underlying our stark divisions and the transformation of political adversaries into perceived enemies.

There is a psychological toll as well. An ethos of relentless growth is experienced in what he identifies as the burnout crisis, which closely correlates to a burgeoning rise in mental illness. Rosa's realism causes him to admit that the modern agenda has given rise to tremendous levels of economic welfare, scientific knowledge, and technological capability. But despite this progress, Rosa concludes that the promises of modernity have not been kept.

The modern world is one of great utility, yet it has left us wanting for experiences fundamental to our sense of well being and our relationship to the world beyond ourselves. A pall pervades society. Growing competition and dwindling resources make the future less promising. Greater knowledge has led to more uncertainty, not less. There is palpable ignorance and skepticism as to how science relates to personal lives. Parents traditionally felt that their children would be better off than themselves: but no longer. At the same time, emergent awareness of historical evils has darkened our appreciation of the past. In Rosa's view, we have lost both the past and the future.

It is apparent that Rosa is a man of the left, and one concludes that he could amply elaborate a political analysis of the oppression and exploitation wrought by neo-liberalism and late capitalism. However, he does not take this direction in this brief work. One concludes that in his view even if economic egalitarianism were achieved, an essential element would remain missing. And this missing dimension, which resonance restores, is the answer to the alienation wrought by the modern circumstances he describes.

Resonance is a mode of experiencing the world around us. Rosa describes it initially as possessing a listening, receptive and responsive heart. Rosa describes resonance in an interview given in January 2017:

"I was looking for a way to save the concept of alienation by defining alienation's true other, so to speak. That's how I arrived at this notion of resonance. You're non-alienated from your work, for example, or from the people you interact with, when you manage to have a responsive, transformative, non-instrumental relationship with them, a resonant relationship. The difference is you don't try to manipulate the other side, which could be a person or an idea or a piece of music or nature, or to control it instrumentally or make it disposable and available. Instead, you try to listen and to answer. And whenever you are in that state of experience, when you listen to some music for example — or when you talk with people or when you do your work right, i.e. when you're in resonance, when you feel that the thing you interact with is important, then it speaks to you, it touches and affects you. So this is the one side of a resonant relationship: You are touched, and affected. But on the other side, you also have the capacity to experience self-efficacy. You reach out to the other side too! That's a relationship which is not instrumental and which is not about control, it's a form of resonance. It's a dialogical relationship, which we can never bring about merely instrumentally." (To read the interview in full, you may click here.)

In Rosa's current work, he elaborates on this concept:

"Whenever resonance does take place-whenever I really stop and connect with what has touched me- I enter into a different state of mind and consider different ideas. I begin to see the world differently." Rosa further notes that the moment of resonance, in which the person feels fully alive and is the opposite of burnout, cannot be forced or coerced.

The notion of non-instrumental relations evokes many associations, most distinctively with German epistemologies. It brings to mind thoughts of Kant's "ding-an-sich" and the unknowability of transcendentals. It suggests a mode of intuition identified with romanticism, which Rosa partially affirms. I think of Martin Buber. Rosa, in this work, cites Buber in passing and the centrality that Buber places on relationships and the experiences that occur with the engagement of 'I" and "Thou." Rosa also brings to mind Erich Fromm (an associate of the Frankfurt School) who contrasted "having" with "being."

While the applications of resonance in this brief presentation are undeveloped, Ross, as a sociologist, asserts that his concept of resonance has transforming possibilities for society, politics, and the prevailing logic of frenetic growth that governs contemporary life.

The nature of resonance, as a moment of changed consciousness, opens the door to religion as a an ally – indeed a locus – where we can find values and narratives that alight with what resonance suggests. To be sure, Rosa is not naive to religion's gross failures to fulfill its most sublime objectives. He notes, "Historically speaking, hardly any other entity has been a more effective resonance killer than the Christian church."

Intrinsic to the religions themselves, Rosa notes that religious institutions, "...and especially those that are dogmatically concerned with preserving their 'pure teachings' – can therefore quickly become monsters that not only kill the vertical axis of resonance but also, in so doing, cause social relationships to fall silent..." The dogmatizing of pure teachings, Rosa concludes, leads to the amassing of social power under the guise of "merciless commandments, domination, and submission in the name of God." It is this propensity that can explain the rampant sexual abuse we have witnessed in the Catholic church and others, as well as in denial of an equal voice to women and exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community. Rosa's appreciation of religion is highly selective, which given religion's variety and complexity, it must be. Despite its gross shortcomings, he nevertheless sees something distinctive in religion that provides the gateway to resonance that he seeks. Pointing to the best in religion, he notes that the religions, "...possess elements that can remind us that there's another way of relating to the world, a way that is not growth oriented or intent on controlling things." It is not only religious teaching or inspiring Biblical verses that can open us to this other way, but churches themselves can still play this role. He cites the experience of entering a church, chapel, or temple. Not always, but sometimes, our disposition, our relationship to being in the world, changes. Our experience is different from being in an office or a supermarket. We move from a stance of agency to one of patiency. Control falls away and aggression has no target. Will such encounters engender the experiences of resonance? Not necessarily. But the stage has been set, and this possibility is critical to Rosa's analysis. As Rosa further notes, such openness to resonance can occur in other spaces. For those for whom religion has no appeal, resonance can emerge while standing at the ocean's shore or when walking through the woods.

Rosa contends that the yearning for resonance is a powerful human need, and concludes with the notion that "If society loses this sense, if it forgets that this type of relationship can exist, then it's ultimately done for."

But what of democracy? What of its relationship to religion? With the virulent divisions we currently experience, with the consequent absence of dialogue across lines of political difference, Rosa asserts that resonance is necessary. The fundamental requirement of democracy is that people listen to one another. He states, "Democracy needs a listening heart in order to function. It needs to be perceptive to (very) different ideas, and it needs to be transformed...religious traditions and institutions have at their disposal the narratives, cognitive reservoirs, rites, practices, and spaces in which a listening heart might be cultivated and experienced....We must allow ourselves to be invoked-spoken to - if democracy is to succeed... At the heart of modernity's crisis lies a crisis of invocability.

One senses that Hartmut Rosa is an academic who is on a mission. The endpoint he seeks, I would maintain, has a long history of its own. The transformation of consciousness that will lead to the transformation of society and the often unseen ills to which the masses of men and women are not fully aware. Yet, having defined those ills and the needed response, Rosa provides scant information as to how opening the space for resonance can be effectuated. Whom is he addressing and what are they to do – politicians, church leaders, academics, citizens in general, people in the pews? The critical questions of which persons and mechanisms will lead and participate in the process remain unanswered.

But, as noted, this is a very short work, and by necessity raises more questions than it can answer. That said, the ideas that Rosa presents are critically worthy of attention. At a time when democracy is severely threatened, and religion's most precious resources have been drowned by a celebration of its own power, Rosa turns our attention to what is most basic to both religion and democracy. By introducing us to his concept of resonance, Hartmut Rosa is reminding us of what lies at the basis of our humanity.

In these times, when ominous political realities have been compounded by pessimism, it is good to receive a message of hope. Hartmut Rosa is a humane scholar who pushes against conditions that govern our lives and the malaise that has darkened our social horizons with creativity and passion.

 

 

 

 

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

This was the first of a wildy popular dragon series--an early one: the world of Pern, dragons and dragonriders, time travel. I'd read about it, and was mildly disappointed after expecting this to be really engrossing. It was instead thin in places, and even tiresome--essentailly not as well written as I'd hoped.

Apparently, McCaffrey considered her work science fiction with a fantasy tone. She sounds like she was a decent person, working with her son and others on some of her later books and finally turning the series over to him.

Well, maybe I'll try her again--if I get really hungry for dragons. I should say that in 1987, Locus ranked two of the eight Pern novels among the "All-Time Best Fantasy Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. (Dragonflight and The White Dragon).

Commenting on this list, David Pringle called them "arguably science fiction rather than fantasy proper," He called McCaffrey's work part of the planetary romance subgenre of science fiction.

 

 

Wings of Fire: the Dragonet Prophecy by Tui T. Sutherland

 

 

This dragon series is aimed at younger children, and is pretty much contemporary now in 2025. I read it because my almost-nine year old grand-daughter was determined to get me to read it!

I liked the lovable dragon protagonist Clay a lot. The main characters are all dragons, and there's lots of cheerful violence, mostly dragon-on-dragon.

The dragons have rather nasty queens who all appear to be Alexander the Great Conqueror wannabes.

There are some funny little squeaky voiced creatures called "scavengers" who appear to be humans. I'm not going to say much about the plot, but it's well done, and somehow having all the protagonists and point of view characters be dragons rather than people seems to work well. The dragons are all rather adolescent in the purity of their ambition, adventuring, loving and hating. No need for human history or much nuance, but there is lots to like–the characters, the dragon tribes. Lots of action and friendly squabbling among the good guys.

 

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

Cornerstone Press has just published William Luvaas's new short fiction collection, The Three Devils & Other Stories. In these stories, the apocalypse comes to Southern California in a nearly-unrecognizable near future wherein severe climate change imperils the economy and social order and wreaks havoc in people’s personal lives.  It’s a wild ride from the cruel streets of Los Angeles to the San Jacinto Mountains. The air itself becomes toxic, Los Angeles is mostly deserted, and predatory gangs wander the streets, along with dreaded “stalkers.”

To survive, people must do battle with those three devils that have long-plagued humans: fear, ignorance, and denial.  While these are not light-hearted stories, what writer Frederick Bush said of Luvaas's novel Going Under also applies to The Three Devils: “Luvaas’s great power as a storyteller brings the reader up out of these sorrows and into a sense of redemption that is triumphant and true.” 

Call it a work of Cli-Fi or speculative fiction, but one that follows its own rules.

 Scientists are asking us to help them educate people about what we are facing—to bring it home to them, so to speak.  This is what Luvaas is attempting to do in this collection, as he did in his 2013 collection: Ashes Rain Down: A story Cycle.

 

 

Paul Rabinowitz News

New poems, short stories and photographs:

(Fiction)
Stoneboat Literary Journal, "The Ending"
Barely South Review, "The Studio"

(Poems)
Stone Poetry Quarterly, "Tongue Tied"
Soup Can Magazine,  "Nor'easter""

(Photography)
Same Faces Collective

And much more! See his webpabe at paulrabinowitz.com

 

 

 

SAD NEWS

 

Newspaper man and novelist, Norman Julian--chronicler of Mountaineer basketball, homesteader-- and friend of many, including me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our friend and colleague Carter Seaton died 12-23-24. She was the author of many book,s including. See and obituary here. For a list of her books, which included novels and nonfiction about the back-to-the-land movement, memoir and biography,    see her website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hilton Obenzinger reports the death of Alan Senauke, who "practiced many things, notably Zen Buddhism as Abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. But he was also a musician, an activist, a printing press operator, and a poet. I've known him since 1965 and collaborated on a lot of projects. "

See a memory piece about Alan at Shambala.com.

 

 

 

 

 

GOOD READING & READING IDEAS ONLINE

 

Check out Fay Martin's columns in which she bounces off her reading and thinking and offers insights for local communities in Ontario.

The latest issues of Danny Williams' "Adventues in the Written Word" is February 2025.

The new Issue of the Jewish Literary Journal

Here is a great reading list from Jeff Rudell. Jeff says he subscribesI "to a Substack 'book club' run by the author and teacher George Saunders....At the end of the year Prof. Saunders asked members to suggest their favourite reads from 2024. The resulting list [linked here] is a bit long (and so, perhaps less useful than a streamlined top-ten might be) but it has some wonderful selections."  

Take a look at Joe Chuman's Individualism and Its Discontents on his Substack blog.

 

 

ESPECIALLY FOR WRITERS

Kelly Watt's newsletter continues to be compact and interesting. She directs us to a good blog post by Elizabeth Kaye Cook and Melanie Jennings about the Big Five and Literary Fiction.

Recommended Book on writing: Architecture of the Novel

Writer Beware (blog and website) have a lot of excellent information to make sure writers aren't scammed. They appear to be part of the excellent Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association,(founded in 1965), but are definitely aimed to be useful to writers of all genres.

 

 

BEST BOOKS LIST!

Shelley Ettinger's best books list from the past year plus. She says, "All fiction except the last. In no particular order."

Babel by R.F. Kuang
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
The Future by Naomi Alderman
James by Percival Everett
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Blackouts by Justin Torres
Symptomatic by Danzy Senna
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrigue Dixon
Descending by Karen Outen
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
The Canopy Keepers by Veronica Henry
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Delaney Bennetts by Desiree Kannell
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Absolution by Alice McDermott
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim

And the only nonfiction one but it's a whopper: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

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BUYING BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER

 

A not-for-profit alternative to Amazon.com is Bookshop.org which sends a percentage of every sale to a pool of brick-and-mortar bookstores. You may also direct the donation to a bookstore of your choice. Lots of individuals have storefronts there, too including me.

.

If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from your public library as either a hard copy or as an e-book.

 

 

You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore. To find a bricks-and-mortar store, click the "shop indie" logo left.  Kobobooks.com sells e-books for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.

 

The largest unionized bookstore in America has a web store at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.

I have a lot of friends and colleagues who despise Amazon. There is a discussion about some of the issues back in Issue # 184,  as well as even older comments from Jonathan Greene and others here.

Another way to buy books online, especially used books, is to use Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder gives the price with shipping and handling, so you can see what you really have to pay. Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores.

Paperback Book Swap is a postage-only way to trade physical books with other readers.

 

Ingrid Hughes suggests another "great place for used books which sometimes turn out to be never-opened hard cover books is Biblio. She says, "I've bought many books from them, often for $4 including shipping."

 

If you use an electronic reader (all kinds), don't forget free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics (copyrights pre-1927).  Also free from the wonderful folks at Standard E-books are redesigned books from the Gutenberg Project and elsewhere--easier to read and more attractive.

 

 

RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER

Please send responses to this newsletter directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you say otherwise, your letter may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.

 

 

LICENSE

Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from Meredith Sue Willis.  Some individual contributors may have other licenses.

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   Meredith Sue Willis, the producer of this newsletter, is a writer and teacher and enthusiastic reader. Her books have been published by Charles Scribner's Sons, HarperCollins, Ohio University Press, Mercury House, West Virginia University Press, Monteymayor Press, Teachers & Writers Press, Mountain State Press, Hamilton Stone Editions, and others. She teaches at New York University's School of Professional Studies.

 

 

BACK ISSUES 

 

#238 Percival Everett, Diane Simmons,Alice McDermott, Cherrie Moraga, Anne McCaffrey, Tui Sutherland, Edith Wharton, James M. Cain, Margaret Atwood, Albert Camu, Caleb Carr, Tony Hillerman, Shirley Jackson. Elaine Pagels.
#237 Stephen L. Carter, Gabrielle Korn, Rachel Kushner, Neal Stephenson, Thomas Hardy, Dreama Frisk, Margery Sharp, Valerie Nieman, Elizabeth Catte, Chris Colfer, Lisa Scottoline, John Grisham, reviews by Christine Willis, Danny Williams, & Rose Culbreth.
#236 Sabaa Tahir, Rebecca Roanhorse, Julian Barnes, Jane Austen, Brandon Taylor, Joshua Leifer, Pauletta Hansel, Carter Sickel, Stephen King, and reviews by Joe Chuman, Elaine Durbach, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, Joel Weinberger, Danny Williams--and more!
#235 James Lee Burke; Kate DiCamillo; Donna Meredith; Elana Ferrante; Tana French; Joe Conason; Nadine Gordimer; Jamaica Kincaid; Ian McEwan; Cat Pleska, Illyon Woo; with reviews by Joe Chuman and Edwina Pendarvis; and more!
#234 Robert Graves, Kathy Manley, Soman Chainani, Marie Tyler McGraw, James Welch, Elmore Leonard, Jennifer Browne, Dennis Lehane, Primo Levi, Elmore Leonard, James McBride. Reviews by Martha Casey, Dreama Frisk, and Diane Simmons--and a poem by Dreama Frisk!
#233 Ursula LeGuin, Ford Madox Ford, Elmore Leonard, Deborah Clearman, Susan Abulhawa, Agatha Christie, Oscar Silver, Jeff Lindsay, Linda Parsons, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Philip Roth, Lisa Scottoline. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Felicia Mitchell.
#232 Jim Minick, Clarice Lispector, The Porch Poems, George du Maurier, Louise Fitzhugh, Natalia Ginzburg, Marilynne Robinson; Kathleen Watt; Hambly, Connelly, Alison Hubbard, Imogen Keeper, James McBride, Jenny Offill.   Reviews by Hilton Obenzinger, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, Suzanne McConnell, and Christine Willis.
#231 Triangle shirtwaist fire, Anthony Burgess, S.A. Cosby, Eva Dolan, Janet Campbell Hale, Barbara Hambly, Marc Harshman, P.D. James, Michael Lewis, Mrs. Oliphant, Paul Rabinowitz, Nora Roberts, Strout, Tokarczuk.  Review by Dreama Frisk.
#230 Henry Adams, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jonathan Lethem, Magda Teter, Mary Jennings Hegar, Chandra Prasad, Timothy Russell, Carter Taylor Seaton, Edna O'Brien, Martha Wells, Thomas Mann, Arnold Bennett, and more. Reviews by Mary Lucille DeBerry, Joe Chuman, John Loonam, Suzanne McConnell, and Edwina Pendarvis.
#229 John Sandford, Dr. J. Nozipo Maraire, Rex Stout; Larry Schardt; Martha Wells; Henry Makepeace Thackery; about Edvard Munch;Erik Larson. Reviews and interviews by John Loonam and Diane Simmons.
#228 Edward P. Jones, Denton Loving, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. Lee Martin, Jesmyn Ward, Michelle Zauner, Valérie Perrin, Philip K. Dick, Burt Kimmelman. Reviewes by Ernie Brill, Joe Chuman, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, & Danny Williams.         
#227 Cheryl Denise, Larissa Shmailo, Eddy Pendarvis, Alice McDermott, Kelly Watt, Elmore Leonard, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Suzy McKee Charnas, and more.
#226 Jim Minick, Gore Vidal, Valeria Luiselli, Richard Wright, Kage Baker, Suzy McKee Charnas, Victor Depta, Walter Mosley. David Hollinger reviewed by Joe Chuman, and more.
#225 Demon Copperhead, Thomas Hardy, Miriam Toews, Kate Chopin, Alberto Moravia, Elizabeth Strout, McCullers, Garry Wills, Valerie Nieman, Cora Harrison. Troy Hill on Isaac Babel; Belinda Anderson on books for children; Joe Chuman on Eric Alterman; Molly Gilman on Kage Baker; and lots more.
#224 The 1619 Project, E.M. Forster. Elmore Leonard, Pledging Season by Erika Erickson Malinoski. Emily St. John Mandel, Val Nieman, John O'Hara, Tom Perrotta, Walter Tevis, Sarah Waters, and more.
#223 Amor Towles, Emily St. John Mandel, Raymond Chandler, N.K. Jemisin, Andrew Holleran, Anita Diamant, Rainer Maria Rilke, and more, plus notes and reviews by Joe Chuman, George Lies, Donna Meredith, and Rhonda Browning White.
#222 Octavia Butler, Elizabeth Gaskell, N.K. Jemisin, Joseph Lash, Alice Munro, Barbara Pym, Sally Rooney, and more.
#221 Victor Serge, Greg Sanders, Maggie O'Farrell, Ken Champion, Barbara Hambly, Walter Mosely, Anne Roiphe, Anna Reid, Randall Balmer, Louis Auchincloss. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Chris Connelly
#220 Margaret Atwood, Sister Souljah, Attica Locke, Jill Lepore, Belinda Anderson, Claire Oshetsky, Barbara Pym, and Reviews by Joe Chuman, Ed Davis, and Eli Asbury
#219  Carolina De Robertis, Charles Dickens, Thomas Fleming, Kendra James, Ashley Hope Perez, Terry Pratchett, Martha Wells. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Danny Williams.
#218 Ed Myers, Eyal Press, Barbara Kingsolver, Edwidge Danticat, William Trevor, Tim O'Brien.  Reviews by Joe Chuman and Marc Harshman.
#217  Jill Lepore; Kathleen Rooney; Stendhal; Rajia Hassib again; Madeline Miller; Jean Rhys; and more. Reviews and recommendations by Joe Chuman, Ingrid Hughes, Peggy Backman, Phyllis Moore, and Dan Gover.
#216 Rajia Hassib; Joel Pechkam; Robin Hobb; Anne Hutchinson; James Shapiro; reviews by Joe Chuman and Marc Harshman; Fellowship of the Rings
#215 Julia Alvarez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Anne Brontë, James Welch, Veronica Roth, Madeline Martin, Barack Obama, Jason Trask, Katherine Anne Porter & more
#214 Brit Bennet, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Robin Hobb, Willliam Kennedy, John Le Carré, John Loonam on Elana Ferrante, Carole Rosenthal on Philip Roth, Peggy Backman on Russell Shorto, Helen Weinzweig, Marguerite Yourcenar, and more.
#213 Pauletta Hansen reviewed by Bonnie Proudfoot; A conversation about cultural appropriation in fiction; T.C. Boyle; Eric Foner; Attica Locke; Lillian Roth; The Snake Pit; Alice Walker; Lynda Schor; James Baldwin; True Grit--and more.
#212 Reviews of books by Madison Smartt Bell, James Lee Burke, Mary Arnold Ward,Timothey Huguenin, Octavia Butler, Cobb & Seaton, Schama
#211 Reviews of books by Lillian Smith, Henry James, Deborah Clearman, J.K. Jemisin, Donna Meredith, Octavia Butler, Penelope Lively, Walter Mosley. Poems by Hilton Obenzinger.
#210 Lavie Tidhar, Amy Tan, Walter Mosley, Gore Vidal, Julie Otsuka, Rachel Ingalls, Rex Stout, John Updike, and more.
#209 Cassandra Clare, Lissa Evans, Suzan Colón, Damian Dressick, Madeline Ffitch, Dennis Lehane, William Maxwell, and more.
#208 Alexander Chee; Donna Meredith; Rita Quillen; Mrs. Humphy Ward; Roger Zelazny; Dennis LeHane; Eliot Parker; and more.
#207 Caroline Sutton, Colson Whitehead, Elaine Durbach, Marc Kaminsky, Attica Locke, William Makepeace Thackery, Charles Willeford & more.
#206 Timothy Snyder, Bonnie Proudfoot, David Weinberger, Pat Barker, Michelle Obama, Richard Powers, Anthony Powell, and more.
#205 George Eliot, Ernest Gaines, Kathy Manley, Rhonda White; reviews by Jane Kimmelman, Victoria Endres, Deborah Clearman.
#204 Larissa Shmailo, Joan Didion, Judith Moffett, Heidi Julavits, Susan Carol Scott, Trollope, Walter Mosley, Dorothy B. Hughes, and more.
#203 Tana French, Burt Kimmelman, Ann Petry, Mario Puzo, Anna Egan Smucker, Virginia Woolf, Val Nieman, Idra Novey, Roger Wall.
#202 J .G. Ballard, Peter Carey, Arthur Dobrin, Lisa Haliday, Birgit Mazarath, Roger Mitchell, Natalie Sypolt, and others.
#201 Marc Kaminsky, Jessica Wilkerson, Jaqueline Woodson, Eliot Parker, Barbara Kingsolver. Philip Roth, George Eliot and more.
#200 Books by Zola, Andrea Fekete, Thomas McGonigle, Maggie Anderson, Sarah Dunant, J.G. Ballard, Sarah Blizzard Robinson, and more.
#199 Reviews by Ed Davis and Phyllis Moore. Books by Elizabeth Strout, Thomas Mann, Rachel Kushner, Craig Johnson, Richard Powers.
#198 Reviews by Belinda Anderson, Phyllis Moore, Donna Meredith, Eddy Pendarvis, and Dolly Withrow. Eliot, Lisa Ko, John Ehle, Hamid, etc.
#197 Joan Silber, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alexander Hamilton, Eudora Welty, Middlemarch yet again, Greta Ehrlich, Edwina Pendarvis.
#196 Last Exit to Brooklyn; Joan Didion; George Brosi's reviews; Alberto Moravia; Muriel Rukeyser; Matthew de la Peña; Joyce Carol Oates
#195 Voices for Unity; Ramp Hollow, A Time to Stir, Patti Smith, Nancy Abrams, Conrad, N.K. Jemisin, Walter Mosely & more.
#194 Allan Appel, Jane Lazarre, Caroline Sutton, Belinda Anderson on children's picture books.
#193 Larry Brown, Phillip Roth, Ken Champion, Larissa Shmailo, Gillian Flynn, Jack Wheatcroft, Hilton Obenziner and more.
#192 Young Adult books from Appalachia; Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Michael Connelly; Middlemarch; historical murders in Appalachia.
#191 Oliver Sacks, N.K. Jemisin, Isabella and Ferdinand and their descendents, Depta, Highsmith, and more.
#190 Clearman, Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods, Doerr, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Miss Fourth of July, Goodbye and more.
#189 J.D. Vance; Mitch Levenberg; Phillip Lopate; Barchester Towers; Judith Hoover; ; Les Liaisons Dangereuses; short science fiction reviews.
#188 Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban; The Hemingses of Monticello; Marc Harshman; Jews in the Civil War; Ken Champion; Rebecca West; Colum McCann
#187 Randi Ward, Burt Kimmelman, Llewellyn McKernan, Sir Walter Scott, Jonathan Lethem, Bill Luvaas, Phyllis Moore, Sarah Cordingley & more
#186 Diane Simmons, Walter Dean Myers, Johnny Sundstrom, Octavia Butler & more
#185 Monique Raphel High; Elizabeth Jane Howard; Phil Klay; Crystal Wilkinson
#184 More on Amazon; Laura Tillman; Anthony Trollope; Marily Yalom and the women of the French Revolution; Ernest Becker
#183 Hilton Obenzinger, Donna Meredith, Howard Sturgis, Tom Rob Smith, Daniel José Older, Elizabethe Vigée-Lebrun, Veronica Sicoe
#182 Troy E. Hill, Mitchell Jackson, Rita Sims Quillen, Marie Houzelle, Frederick Busch, more Dickens
#181 Valerie Nieman, Yorker Keith, Eliot Parker, Ken Champion, F.R. Leavis, Charles Dickens
#180 Saul Bellow, Edwina Pendarvis, Matthew Neill Null, Judith Moffett, Theodore Dreiser, & more
#179 Larissa Shmailo, Eric Frizius, Jane Austen, Go Set a Watchman and more
#178 Ken Champion, Cat Pleska, William Demby's Beetlecreek, Ron Rash, Elizabeth Gaskell, and more.
#177 Jane Hicks, Daniel Levine, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Ken Chamption, Patricia Harman
#176 Robert Gipe, Justin Torres, Marilynne Robinson, Velma Wallis, Larry McMurty, Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, Fumiko Enchi, Shelley Ettinger
#175 Lists of what to read for the new year; MOUNTAIN MOTHER GOOSE: CHILD LORE OF WEST VIRGINIA; Peggy Backman
#174 Christian Sahner, John Michael Cummings, Denton Loving, Madame Bovary
#173 Stephanie Wellen Levine, S.C. Gwynne, Ed Davis's Psalms of Israel Jones, Quanah Parker, J.G. Farrell, Lubavitcher girls
#172 Pat Conroy, Donna Tartt, Alice Boatwright, Fumiko Enchi, Robin Hobb, Rex Stout
#171 Robert Graves, Marie Manilla, Johnny Sundstrom, Kirk Judd
#170 John Van Kirk, Carter Seaton,Neil Gaiman, Francine Prose, The Murder of Helen Jewett, Thaddeus Rutkowski
#169 Pearl Buck's The Exile and Fighting Angel; Larissa Shmailo; Liz Lewinson; Twelve Years a Slave, and more
#168 Catherine the Great, Alice Munro, Edith Poor, Mitch Levenberg, Vonnegut, Mellville, and more!
#167 Belinda Anderson; Anne Shelby; Sean O'Leary, Dragon tetralogy; Don Delillo's Underworld
#166 Eddy Pendarvis on Pearl S. Buck; Theresa Basile; Miguel A. Ortiz; Lynda Schor; poems by Janet Lewis; Sarah Fielding
#165 Janet Lewis, Melville, Tosltoy, Irwin Shaw!
#164 Ed Davis on Julie Moore's poems; Edith Wharton; Elaine Drennon Little's A Southern Place; Elmore Leonard
#163 Pamela Erens, Michael Harris, Marlen Bodden, Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, Lisa J. Parker, and more
#162 Lincoln, Joseph Kennedy, Etel Adnan, Laura Treacy Bentley, Ron Rash, Sophie's Choice, and more
#161 More Wilkie Collins; Duff Brenna's Murdering the Mom; Nora Olsen's Swans & Klons; Lady Audley's Secret
#160 Carolina De Robertis, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ross King's The Judgment of Paris
#159 Tom Jones. William Luvaas, Marc Harshman, The Good Earth, Lara Santoro, American Psycho
#158 Chinua Achebe's Man of the People; The Red and the Black; McCarthy's C.; Farm City; Victor Depta;Myra Shapiro
#157 Alice Boatwright, Reamy Jansen, Herta Muller, Knut Hamsun, What Maisie Knew; Wanchee Wang, Dolly Withrow.
#156 The Glass Madonna; A Revelation
#155 Buzz Bissinger; reader suggestions; Satchmo at the Waldorf
#154 Hannah Brown, Brad Abruzzi, Thomas Merton
#153 J.Anthony Lukas, Talmage Stanley's The Poco Fields, Devil Anse
#152 Marc Harshman guest editor; John Burroughs; Carol Hoenig
#151 Deborah Clearman, Steve Schrader, Paul Harding, Ken Follet, Saramago-- and more!
#150 Mitch Levenberg, Johnny Sundstrom, and Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns.
#149 David Weinberger's Too Big to Know; The Shining; The Tiger's Wife.
#148 The Moonstone, Djibouti, Mark Perry on the Grimké family
#147 Jane Lazarre's new novel; Johnny Sundstrom; Emotional Medicine Rx; Walter Dean Myers, etc. 
#146 Henry Adams AGAIN!  Also,Fun Home: a Tragicomic
#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow the River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110 Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99   Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98   Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97   Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96   Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95   Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94   Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93   Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92   Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91   Richard Powers discussion
#90   William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89   William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88   Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87   Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86   Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85   Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84   Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83   3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82   The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81   Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80   Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79   Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78   The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77   On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76   Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75   The Makioka Sisters
#74    In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73    Joyce Dyer
#72    Bill Robinson WWII story
#71    Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70    On Reading
#69    Nella Larsen, Romola
#68    P.D. James
#67    The Medici
#66    Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65    Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64    Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63    The Namesame
#62    Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61    Lauren's Line
#60    Prince of Providence
#59    The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58    AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57    Screaming with Cannibals
#56    Benita Eisler's Byron
#55    Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54    Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53    Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52    Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51    Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50    Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49    Caucasia
#48    Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47    Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46    Invitation to a Beheading
#45    The Princess of Cleves
#44    Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43    Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42    John Sanford
#41    Isabelle Allende
#40    Ed Myers on John Williams
#39    Faulkner
#38    Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37    James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36    Middlemarch
#35    Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34    Emshwiller
#33    Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32    More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31    Lesbian fiction
#30    Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29    More William Styron
#28    William Styron
#27    Daniel Gioseffi
#26    Phyllis Moore
#25    On Libraries....
#24    Tales of the City
#23    Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22    More on Why This Newsletter
#21    Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20    Jane Lazarre
#19    Artemisia Gentileschi
#18    Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17    Arthur Kinoy
#16    Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15    George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14    Small Presses
#13    Gap Creek, Crum
#12    Reading after 9-11
#11    Political Novels
#10    Summer Reading ideas
#9      Shelley Ettinger picks
#8      Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7      About this newsletter
#6      Maria Edgeworth
#5      Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4      Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3      J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2      Chick Lit
#1      About this newsletter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

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