We haven't done one of these in quite some time. Each clue is the first sentences of...
books
Haruki Murakami returns with "First Person Singular": eight short stories that read like memories that might have...
Lending libraries began among the lumières who could afford them. Thoughts on public bookcases, private vices, and...
Richard Wright's "lost" 1942 novel of guilt, exile, and spiritual initiation has been fortuitously pulled up from...
Let’s explode the Canon and cultivate critical distance, opening up new vistas and leaving behind stale arguments.
Google searching is utilitarian, but it is not a substitute for the visceral fun of opening a...
I know every single one of you is wondering whether and in what ways I appreciate James...
This week I read two novels by Hari Kunzru, a modern magician of storytelling, though the tricks...
The time felt right to reread Thomas Mann's novella and watched Lucino Visconti's 1971 film of desire...
In times of stress, it's good to return to nourishing comfort food, which for me means Jim...
While getting by in strange times, I read a book of short stories about how average Ukrainians...
Our minds are messy places. This novel takes you into the very nervous mind of an Ohio...
A friend's favorite book from last year, which describes a terrorist attack that either happened or did...
On a recommendation from a local poet, I have started reading the short stories of an American...
We have fooled ourselves into perceiving our technology as neutral, detached from our own biased and irrational...
The Balzac streak continues with a supernatural tale built on the fantastical conceit that our energies can...
Here's a book that takes cultural essay writing to a whole other level.
"The book was better" is not something I say very often, but it is no less true:...
On a posthumous novel by the great writer (and overwriter) from North Carolina.
