Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 237
December 3, 2024
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Some of the writers featured in this issue:
Dreama Frisk; Valerie Nieman; Gabrielle Korn; Stephen L. Carter; Hilton Obenzinger; Rachel Kushner
Contents
Back Issues
Announcements
Book Reviews
Short Responses, Reviews, & Recommendations
Danny Williams Comments
Especially for Writers
Book Reviews
Unless otherwise noted, reviews are by MSW.
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
reviewed by Christine WillisA Tale of Magic by Chris Colfer
Before We Left the Land by Dreama Frisk
The Firm by John Grisham
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Shut Outs by Gabrielle Korn
The Strange Case of Rachel K by Rachel Kushner
Upon The Corner Of The Moon by Valerie Nieman
reviewed by Rose CulbrethMistaken Identity by Lisa Scottoline
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
More
Sue Horton on the 25 Harry Bosch novels
Some of my favorite books of 2024 at Shepherd.com -- a site
that offers reading ideas and the opportunity to share yours.FREE: Danny Williams is offering free samples of his editing services. See more here.
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Issue No. 51, Fall 2024
T H E H A M I L T O N S T O N E R E V I E W
Poetry: James Daniels, Richard Lyons, Tim Suermondt, George Kalamaras, John S. Eustis, Sharon Whitehall, Ronald Moran, Rick Adang, J.R. Solonche, Susan Shea, Ryan J. Davidson, Greg McBride, Barry Seiler, Josh Mahler, Stephen Gibson, Tony Beyer, Mary Dean Lee, Claire Scott, Moriah Hampton, Stan Sanvel Rubin.
Prose: Mark Connelly, Cara Diaconoff,Sohana Manzoor, Eric Maroney, Carlos Ramet, Bob Rehm
For information about submissions, click here.
NOTES
I'm hardly the only person saying this, but in these dangerous times, most of us naturally pull in a little, seeking solace and support-- and, I like to think, ways to support each other.
In this spirit, for the upcoming holidays, please consider supporting writers by buying their books as gifts for others-- and by giving at least brief ratings or reviews on Amazon.com. Here are a few brand new books:
For something different, also take a look at some of the books from the increasingly numerous small and independent presses. New right now include Valerie Nieman's Upon the Corner of the Moon (reviewed in this issue), Dreama Frisk's Before We Left the Land (also reviewed in this issue). and Kelly Watt'sThe Weeping Degree: How Astrology Saved Me from Suicide.
I'm also hoping you'll take a look at some of your faithful editor's books: novels for children like Billie of Fish House Lane and science fiction like Soledad in the Desert. If you are a writer yourself, consider my books about writing, including Blazing Pencils and Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel.
Here are two presses I'm associated with plus some small and university Presses that have published wonderful work, including mine: Hamilton Stone Editions and Irene Weinberger Books, Mountain State Press, WVU Press, and Ohio University Press. For little kids, how about the Irene Weinberger Books editions of Miguel Antonio Ortiz's books for children including Mario y la Vaca. For grown ups, there's Hilton Obenzinger's recent Witness: 2017-2020. Look below for a sample of Hilton's upcoming book Old Fool.
I welcome your recommendations too.
Beliefs
By Hilton Obenzinger
I always wonder why people think there’s an after-life. I sympathize with those who yearn for paradise but I can’t do it. One life is all I can handle, if at all, why ask for more?
I can’t imagine heaven or hell – except hell on earth in Gaza and Treblinka. There are some people I’d love to see in some imaginary hell, of course, but I’m pretty sure they’ll end up only sharing dust with me and everyone else.
I do find the notion of reincarnation appealing. Maybe we can get it right, coming back again and again. However, I don’t anticipate my soul flying off into another body. The miracle stops here.
I’m not too sure about the idea of a soul, either. Maybe there’s a ball of consciousness that is irreducible in the center of my gut. Or maybe it’s just my gut. It’s a shame that whatever it is can’t be passed on. It’s a waste, I know. Every life is a universe, according to Jewish lore, and multiple universes disappear each day.
I don’t know why people are afraid of ghosts. Just say hello and leave them alone. If there’s an angry ghost, ask them what the problem is and help out. Same thing you should do with the living. However, if they’re vicious and mean like the living, run like hell!
I do believe in Original Sin, just not the biblical kind. Just the fact that I’m a human means I’m capable of doing horrible things – and it’s a fight not to.
I do believe in Evil. Or maybe Evil believes in me.
When people want to kill and maim, even get pleasure from it, that’s Evil. When they are deluded into thinking that it’s fine, even necessary, to kill other people, that’s Evil. When you allow people to starve when you can feed them, that’s Evil.
It’s so hard to believe that so many Jews have become The Beasts (what my father called the Nazis). No people chosen to be priestly, just miserable oppressors with a grand excuse: We suffered, and now you will too,
I don’t believe in God. And God is perfectly happy with that.
I don’t believe there’s an End or Goal of history. There’s no inevitable classless society, no thousand years of blessings, no ultimate grand technological transformation, at least none assured. There’s an end, for certain, when we destroy ourselves, or when the planet gets sucked into our dying sun millions of years hence. And even that isn’t a goal, just something that will happen.
I don’t believe in AI, although that doesn’t matter, it will grab my brain no matter what. Maybe AI heralds the next stage of human evolution: the machines can gather all of our knowledge and experience and become a better us. And maybe we can continue on as machines that can survive the extreme heat and radiation and floods we have caused. Somehow, I think that's wishful thinking.
I believe in wishes.
I can’t believe so many of my friends are dead, and the list keeps growing. I dreamt last night that I was walking with Paul Auster along the railroad tracks behind my house. He had a small boy with him, who may have been my grandson Eli although I couldn’t see his face. “I can’t believe that you’re dying,” I said. “What am I going to do? What about that big project we’re working on together?” He said, “I’m at peace. You’ll figure it out.” I woke up saddened, again, over my friend’s death. But in the dream Paul may have stood in for me, and I was the one dying. I better finish this big project soon before it’s too late.
BOOK REVIEWS
This list is alphabetical by book author (not reviewer).
They are written by MSW unless otherwise noted..
Before We Left the Land by Dreama Frisk
This stunningly lovely novel seems first to be a paean to farm life in central West Virginia just at the beginning of the Second World War. The food, in particular, down to the wilted lettuce salad the matriarch of the family serves, feels like home, whatever tradition you grew up in. The novel, however, is not an exercise in nostalgia. As you go deeper, you come upon the conflicts and struggles of a remarkable cast of characters--conflicts with each other, with the government, with history.
The two main point-of-view characters are young, Emogene, a nine year old whose father, the oldest son of the farm family, has moved to a city for industrial work. Emogene loves the farm and wants to live there all the time. Her young uncle, June for Junior, is about to start his senior year in high school, and he has aspirations to get a football scholarship to the state university. He likes the ladies, drinks and tomcats at night, and deeply misses his brother Carl who has enlisted in the Air Corps and gone to Florida to be trained.
Carl himself has a brief prologue appearance when he hears of Pearl Harbor on the radio and decides to go to war. He is, in everyone's estimation, the brother everyone loves most and agrees is the best of them all. He loves hunting, farming, would have liked to stay in school and play football like June, but drops out to run the farm. It is his mystifying death that brings to a head the beginning of the family's break-up–the leaving the land.
At a very deep level, then, this is a novel about how the ripples of war disrupt even a family idyllically distant from battlefields. Without their anchor, Carl, members of the family begin to fall apart. When his body comes
back from Florida damaged in an ugly way, which his mother discovers when she follows local tradition and embraces the body, Uncle Marsh and a reluctant June go on a quest to find out what happened.
Uncle Marsh, a hidebound Christian and disciplinary martinet, with June drives for days nonstop to the Florida air base where Carl was killed. There, instead of satisfaction or even real respect, they face bureaucratic indifference and the discovery of government propaganda: it is kept a close secret that a new plane model is frequently crashing into the ocean, but no one knows exactly what happened to Carl.
They go home without an answer to their question, and while there is some real communication between the affluent old farmer and his nephew, and while June has insights that lead him to grow up, there is also a devastation that, combined with the coming of strip mining and family members leaving home, is the beginning of the end of the family on the land.
There is a short, poignant and essential epilogue that tells us about the rest of the lives of some of the main characters. Most of them leave the land, or stay and are lonely. Leaving the land we see in this very particular and special novel is a great trauma that has happened to American farmers as well as millions of refugees around the world who have been driven from their homes.
The majority of us have left the land. Many of us are to a greater or lesser extent unmoored. What will replace the old traditions, the deep family bonds and the sense of knowing who and where we are? For some, it is new, constructed families, across racial and ethnic lines. For others it is finding a home in some institution or political movement. Where does this all lead? We are just beginning to find out. But don't miss Dreama Frisk's unusual story of the wide ripples of war and greed.
For more about the book and about Dreama Frisk, see her web page at https://www.dreamafrisk.com/.
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
Forest Whitaker in the 2024 TV series version of The Emperor of Ocean ParkThis novel has a lot of excellent qualities, including an interesting milieu among the so-called Gold Coast Black upper class. Most of the characters live in the environs of Washington D.C., and many summer in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard. The narrator and protagonist is frankly Christian and conservative, and he describes his family with its terrific central patriarch, recently dead, the narrator's father known as The Judge. The Judge was almost a member of the Supreme Court, but was blocked by a scandal that is very much part of this story.
So there are some really good characters, a fair amount of action, mysteries, an insider look at a law school faculty--really so much good. The problem is that the writing style isn't as powerful as the materials.
What it isn't is really as powerfully written as it was supposed to be. It was Carter's first fiction, published in 2002, and it was a many-weeks best seller, with sequels and a movie. The problem for me is a kind of heavy-handed quality, perhaps particularly in the narrator Talcott "Misha" Garland, who is one of those tortured men who has more angst than he seems to know how to put on the page. He is interesting, with his commitment to monogamy, which his wife doesn't share. I'm not totally convinced by his commitment, and wish he had a little more sense of humor. His search for his father's secrets pretty frequently telegraphs what's coming. The sentences are turgid in places (Carter is, after all, a lawyer). In other places, though, he has lively dialog and sharp action. Also, the ending seems to be very slow gathering itself up for the final charge.
On the other hand, I intend to read another of his novels, and when this one was good, it was quite good, and the world it explores is very involving.
For reviews that came out when it was first published, see The New York Times and The Guardian. The Guardian said, "Inevitably for a work of this length - and one that relies for its effects on the forensic flourishes of the genre - it is not without its extended water-jumps and patches of boggy ground. There is, perhaps, a sense in which Carter thinks rather than feels about his characters, or rather that he does their thinking for them. Alternatively, the sense of a writer who is playing all the parts himself, resisting that illusion of individual separateness, may just be a result of the first-person narration."
And here are some more recent comments from when when the book was turned into a video series.
Upon The Corner Of The Moon by Valerie Nieman reviewed by Rose Culbreth
The latest offering from Valerie Nieman, Upon The Corner Of The Moon, is an epic tale taking from both history and legend. It follows Macbeth, the character from Shakespeare’s play, and Gruach (Lady Macbeth), from childhood to young adulthood in early eleventh century Scotland.
Foster families raise both children after they are sent away at very young ages for safe keeping. As the story develops, the cast expands to include recurring figures from Shakespeare, like Malcolm, Duncan, and historical figures such as Gruach’s first husband Gillecomgan and Macbeth’s father Findlaich, King of the North. Nieman brings the childhood bonds and educations they experienced with their foster families and the hardships of life in those times to life and light.
Nieman has woven a masterful story with the attention to detail of a historian and the lyrical skill of a seasoned poet. Nieman has tucked beautifully lyrical passages into the story’s framework and presents her readers with a grand tale of history and emotion among the backdrop of kingdoms at war, daily life in those times, and the effect it has on all. I highly recommend this book
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
So light and delightful! A column in the New York Times was naming older books worth going back for. This was published by the popular British writer in 1944 but set in 1938 just before World War II.
What I liked best was the lightness without being silly (although some things ARE silly, such as how Cluny falls in love and with whom). There's a lot of making fun of the British class system, and part of the fun is how our Cluny Brown isn't exactly a socialist, but rather a natural democrat who simply never understands why she isn't completely equal with everyone else.
It's almost a kind of stupidity or blindness, but she's such fun. Definitely worth a look.
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
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I started this reread several months ago, then got impatient and dropped it for a while. I have to gear myself up for Hardy, where everyone interesting is always doomed. He does have a little humor, but it's usually heavy-handed local color with rustics who are somewhere between infinitely wise and obnoxiously clownish.
This one is set on a great heath in England with little hamlets and villages and hills and ancient people's burying grounds in the form of barrows. The heath itself is wonderful in his telling: his insects and furze and snakes and butterflies and moths are all far better reading than any other nature enthusiast novelist I know. He doesn't set nature up as an artifact to be admired as in a gallery, but rather as causing sweat and snake bite and moths grabbed and thrown into candles as a signal.
The people are always walking, on paths, across the open heath, meeting a cross roads. They walk six miles one way to pay a call, striding all over this place day and night. The women walk too, even in the dark.
Beautiful, exotic Eustacia may be shallow and doomed, but she wanders the heath in the night all alone. She has no outlet for her powers and romantic yearnings for travel and adventure, but she does walk. I love that about Hardy. His women tend to have bad outcomes (and so do the men, of course), but they take more exercise than any other nineteenth century novelist's women characters.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
My son told me about this classic of nineties cyberpunk. It started out, said Stephenson, to be a computer generated graphic novel, and it's full of stuff that isn't quite what really happened in real life, but in many ways amazingly close.
It's a dystopia about a completely privatized America: the Mafia is private, "Fedland" takes care of things like the mail that no one else wants or can make a profit on. Y.T., the skater/Kourier girl lives with her mother. who works for the Feds out of a kind of altruistic desire to serve. Teen-aged Y.T. is lots of fun. She moves through the city by slapping a magnetic device on cars to pull her swiftly through L.A. traffic.
The other main character, is Hiro Protagonist, and although he is a super hacker and supreme sword fighter, he spends his time (too much, IMHO) researching ancient Sumer for a "virus" that is both actual an actual physical disease and a computer virus. I think. The details of Sumerian mythology get boring: Hiro is in his office in the Metaverse, in the person of his avatar (and he is such a super hacker he is one of the builders of the Metaverse), and he talks with a non-human called the Librarian who feeds him information, often with footnotes. I liked the Librarian and a bitter, nasty Aleut contract killer known as Raven who mostly uses glass knives for his work and falls for Y.T.
There are tons of wonderful details: people who use commercial avatars for the metaverse look cheap black and white and static-y, where as the real hackers' avatars appear three dimensional and in full color. Oh, and there's the Raft, a giant floating city made out of the aircraft carrier Enterprise and lots of boat people's escape dinghies, as well as other large and small craft where an evil founder of a religion is trying to dump all this immigrants on the west coast of the U.S. and take over via them and his hacker-killing super virus from Sumer. I still find Ancient Sumer too random.
Lots of action, fighting, wise cracks, a little hot sex (well, at least one scene of hot sex)–and except for a lot of Sumerian info-dumping, I enjoyed it.
Except for how real it appeared as I was reading it on Election Day, 2024.
The Strange Case of Rachel K by Rachel Kushner
l liked The Strange Case of Rachel K well enough, but really, what it is, is three clever-to-brilliant short stories. Nothing wrong with that, and indeed a lot right, but I don't quite get the uproar about it. Clever, amusing, with some interesting observations and imaginings about Cuba between the European conquest and the revolution, and excellent sentences. But for all the brilliance and large-projected historical context, it feels slight or perhaps a little like showing off.
When I reviewed Kushner's The Flamethrowers a while back, I said this: https://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive196-200.html#flamethrowers. I can hear myself trying to be fair, to squash down my jealousy of all successful writers, especially those younger than I am, to attain a measure of objectivity. I'll read another of her books, probably, because my beef isn't that there's anything wrong with her writing or what she's trying to do, but just that its importance, her importance seems overblown.
Here is what Kirkus said about The Strange Case of Rachel K.
The Shut Outs by Gabrielle Korn
I'm not sure why I got on the ARC list for this post apocalyptic YA LBGQT novel, which is actually a sequel to a previous novel of hers. I decided to see if I liked it, and generally did–certainly enough to take the ride, i.e. read it.
There are several sets of characters and a couple of time frames, and it all comes together at the end pretty nicely: it isn't so much tricks as just story telling. The Apocalypse here is rapid climate change with floods and wildfires and plagues and heat bad enough that people have to keep moving north. The heat is done nicely, and there are several interesting ideas: one, hardly new, is that the wealthy save themselves and a chosen few by pretending to be climate friendly but actually encouraging climate change. They go to something called Inside, with a chosen few others. This is a sealed off enclave, with walls and an underground. As long as the rich-and-powerful want to keep you in, you've thrown their scraps.
There's also, especially interesting, a group of climate activists who turn into a cult. They have a lot of earth saving technology that they keep from other groups, including at least one super-bean for life-preserving food.
So it's an interesting world, these various survivalist groups, the good guys mostly led by Lesbian or otherwise gender fluid women and young people. What gives it life is various individuals learning one another's cultures, everyone falling in love and lust.
I'll keep an eye out for Korn's work.
SOME Short Responses, Mini-Reviews & Recommendations
(As usual, by MSW unless otherwise credited)
Christine Willis recommends: What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
I have just finished What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. The book is an impassioned sort of "return to your roots" cry for which Catte builds a solid case. She ran away from Appalachia, as I think many have. She didn't find a better life, but she did find her way back emboldened with understanding and motivation to work within her community. And she does do what Vance did not: she found worth in her home. I wonder if she had to flee to find that worth ... I think so.
MSW comment: This is one of the books that was written in reaction to J.D.'s Hillbilly Elegy, and its direct references to him, several years before he got political, are very much in keeping with who he still is.
Danny Williams's Comments on a Few Books:
Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale was a chore to read, but in the end I thought it was worth it.
A Soldier in the Great War took me about a year of reading it, giving up, and going back to it. Like A Winter's Tale, magical parts of it remain with me. I've had Memoir From Antproof Case for more than 20 years, I've read about 50 pages, and every year I consider giving it as a Christmas gift to someone who doesn't read, who will be impressed at its heft and thank me. Helprin creates small hideaway spaces for his protagonists, so precise and delicious I'm sad I can never go there. And he does masterful horses.
[If] you like Big Fat things, I recommend Charles Palliser, The Quincunx. ("Pronounce it carefully," my father-in-law liked to say.) A gimmicky format, like the guy you met on the way to St. Ives. Every book has five parts, and every part has five sections, and every section has five chapters . . . , and all the details escape me after these years, but a joy on a couple of levels. On the surface it extends Dickens into even deeper injustice, unfortunate circumstance, and hopeless poverty of material and spirit, with helpless good people tortured at every step by powerful bad people. Underneath, it was leading me unsuspecting toward a realization that black and white are not as polarized as they appear, and most people are mostly doing what they can with the circumstances life has handed them....A bonus, to my taste: so many characters there's a list and an identifying phrase for each, so you can refer to it and think, "Ah, yeah, the lady in the dress shop who a hundred pages ago tried to . . . " Now that I've reminded myself of this, I may dig it out of the attic and read it again. Do not expect to hear more from me for about a month and a half.
I leave a book in every hotel or motel room for someone to find. 50 or more years ago, this was my introduction to A Canticle for Liebowitz.
The Firm by John Grisham
Yes, it was entertaining, and I used it for relaxation reading, about on the level of good television, which isn't bad, but I never could get the various partners and associates of the Firm separated. The whole book, published in the late 80's has a late fifties, early sixties feel. This is probably the women, who,while Grisham tried to give them some agency, but always labels for their physical attributes (Abby's stunning legs, Tammy's spectacular boobs). Really they're there to help out the increasingly brilliant and heroic Mitch McDeere as he flummoxes the Firm, the Mafia, AND the FBI.
I think that's enough Grisham for me.
Mistaken Identity by Lisa Scottoline
After Grisham, it's refreshing that Scottoline really likes her people, and makes them at least more colorful than Grisham's. This one got better toward the end, pretty exciting in places, but I'm ready for some real writing now.
A Tale of Magic by Chris Colfer
I read this because my granddaughter is crazy about Colfer's books, two or three series of them, and there's a lot of great stuff, although it all happens a little too fast for me. There's a strong moral sense in the book, which has a very good heart--all the right answers about being diverse, equitable and inclusive. And kind.
The magical people in this world are mostly oppressed, and young kids go away to school and/or prison and have adventures. Brystal Evergreen the protagonist is determined to have a real life in spite of living in a place where girls and women are devalued and forbidden to study, where magical people are out-lawed and sometimes executed. And she, of course, discovers that she has Powers!
There is a special school for special children and young people, and Brystal finds a crew of friends (the best one is Lucy the rebel and wit and professional theater person and tambourine player). There's only one boy in the group, and they make friends with a mute, risen-from-the-dead knight.
One interesting touch is a surprise near the end about how using violence to fight violence is not a good idea. There are two more in this trilogy, and I can't say yet if I want to read more.
GOOD READING & LISTENING ONLINE AND OFF
Cat Pleska has a creative nonfiction piece on the travails of Appalachia called "The Ineffability of Home" in the fall issue of Still: A Journal.
Diane Simmons talking about The Courtship of Eva Eldridge, now an audio book! See our review here.
The Latest Danny Williams Adventures in the Written Word, November 2024 .
Danny talks about fine- tuning Appalachian dialect in dialogue--and a lot more.Scott Oglesby's article, "Hippie in a Jazz Club."
Loss and Found: A Memoir by Karen Flyer
Growing up is extraordinarily difficult for some girls. Some lose a parent at an early age. Some suffer from depression. Some battle anorexia. Some are sexually abused. Some turn to drugs, alcohol, or sexual promiscuity in order to dull their pain. Karen Flyer experienced all of these tragedies during her tumultuous childhood. Loss and Found is a spellbinding account of Karen's life from early childhood through graduate school, detailing her experiences with parental suicide, alcoholism, and sexual abuse and their contributions to her own substance abuse, anorexia, sexual promiscuity, and self-rejection. The novel brings readers along on her journey from a fear of abandonment and constant struggle to prove herself "worthy" of love to a place of realizing her own self-worth and finally finding peace.
ESPECIALLY FOR WRITERS
Check out Estelle Erasmus's book on getting nonfiction writing noticed. More on Estelle Erasmus:www.estelleserasmus.com (sign up for her newsletter and podcasts); WIRED: How toResist the Temptation of AI When Writing ; Writer's Digest: What to Do to Pre-Launch to Get Your Book Noticed ; Shondaland: I'm Learning to Listen in New Ways
A page of samples of very close editing, annotated.
Article on how Nanowrimo did NOT work work for one writer: Elinor Florence: "Why NaNoWriMo Doesn't Work For a Historical Novel.".
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MasterClass on getting rid of "filter" phrases Thanks to Jeff Rudell!
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Omerta: Selected Poems by Les Gottesman
Edited by Bill Crossman, Hilton Obenzinger, and Alan Senauke
Omerta: Selected Poems by Les Gottesman gathers a selection of his poems from 2006 to 2019 as well as earlier works from the 1960s and 70s. Les Gottesman's poems straddle the New York School and San Francisco Beat literary scenes with his own uniquely comic, surrealist sensibility. He resumed his career as poet and editor in the early 2000s, after he devoted decades as an educator and radical political activist. As poet and playwright Genny Lim explains in the Preface, "Les Gottesman's willful deconstruction of literary conventions through his terse metric schemes, find their own dissonant logic and stream of consciousness in surprising accord, if read aloud, to the discordant rhythms and riffs of the best boppers and new music innovators of our time, like Bird, Dizzy, Hawk, Ornette or Cage." Novelist and poet Paul Auster finds in the poems "surprise after surprise, delivered with wit and masterful timing." Critic Bruce F. Kawin calls his poems "funny and personal. Sharp and obscure. His tightly arranged sounds and vivid words take you somewhere but don't tell you where it is. He's a grave jester with a speeding mind and a montage artist's control of tone." The last period of poetic ferment by this "grave jester" lasted until his death in 2019. Omerta gathers a selection of all of his poems, those 2006 to 2019 as well as earlier works from the 1960s and 70s. Omerta: Selected Poems by Les Gottesman includes the preface by Genny Lim, essays by the three editors, Bill Crossman, Hilton Obenzinger, and Alan Senauke, and images of book covers by acclaimed artist Jesse Gottesman.
GREAT NEWS!! Judith Moffett has signed a contract with Fairwood Press to reprint the Holy Ground Trilogy. The books will appear in 2026. The trilogy is composed of THE RAGGED WORLD (Vol. I), TIME, LIKE AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM (Vol. II), and THE BIRD SHAMAN (Vol. III). They will be published for the first time in a uniform edition, which pleases me very much. RAGGED and TIME were New York Times Notable Books for 1991 and 1992, and TIME was shortlisted for the Tiptree
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Still: The Journal is putting out its final issue after 15 years. What a loss! The fall issue issue which includes new poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction as well as Jody DiPerna's feature-interview with Taylor Brown, reviews of new books, visual art by Tyler Barrett, and a Still Life feature from Jenny Hobson. Their vast archives will remain open and available. Read all about it on their homepage.
Ed Davis Fall 2024 Literary Announcements--with a focus on Ohio, but by no means limited.
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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.
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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
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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 occasional 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
#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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