In the late 1800s, the semi-frozen Canadian territory north of Sault Ste. Marie is no place to go wandering around with winter coming on...

"I listened on a hot July morning in 2003 as a Snake River jetboat captain, idling his boat in front of a cove known as Deep Creek, t...

His eyes were such a pale shade of blue they seemed transparent under thick pink lids. As the group of officers passed them by, the t...

While running errands this weekend, I made a quick stop at one of my favorite hidey-hole library book shops. This one is tucked away in the...

How can I review a book that took me 30 years to read? This is not just a book, it is part of my life. I have been working on The Comple...

First awarded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction is one of the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded ...

Grounded in outmoded attitudes about class and distractingly highlighted by outmoded attitudes about race, Alice Adams has not aged well....

"The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door." -- Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay I'm flying throug...

November 11 is Veterans' Day. Or Armistice Day, for traditionalists. At our house, it is also our wedding anniversary. This year we ce...

It was a strange country again but at the end he was not lonely and, later, waking, it was still strange and no one spoke at all but it wa...

Just in time for Mailbox Monday, the mail man delivered: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay This is my Book Club book for November. ...

Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China is still the definitive work on the subject, in continuous print since the Cambridge U...

No blogging today while I am traveling for work. I put in some late posts from my hotel room the last couple of days, but I hope to finish ...

This week's Booking Through Thursday asks about a preference for biographies or autobiographies. My answer: both, depending on the sub...

In her accessible "citizen’s guide" to health care reform, Sally Pipes examines The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care a...

"Maud simply wanted to live in Paris, with or without a husband, preferably without. While careful not to let her thoughts show ...

Thanks once again to Reading Local and its monthly readers' participation contest , I have several new books to list for Mailbox Monda...

Mark Helprin’s rollicking novel, Freddy and Fredericka , follows the adventures of the Prince and Princess of Wales as, plagued by scandal...

Our new neighborhood takes Halloween very seriously. Everyone has jack-o-lanterns, lights, decorations, and spooky stuff -- all geared for l...

Caprial's Bistro is one of my favorite restaurants in Portland. I also love her on her tv show and have learned a lot by watching her...

Kate Atkinson is a relatively new find for me. I read her debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum , a couple of years ago because it...

"My mother read a lot, sighed a lot, and went to bed early." -- Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner Hotel du Lac ,...

The Age of Reagan (Vol. II): The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980 - 1989 by Steven F. Hayward . "There were important aspects of...

It was shaping up to be a completely book-free week last week, until I got an invitation from a friend to go to her husband's book-si...

Natasha at Maw Books Blog is hosting this month's Bookworms' Carnival and her theme is "Africa" books -- those written b...

. Laughing Gas is one of Wodehouse's stand-alone novels, featuring none of his usual cast of characters up to high jinx in their...

Donovan Campbell joined the Marines after 9/11. A recent Princeton grad and first in his class at the Marines’ Basic Officer Course, C...

"I had just begun to write this story, when a literary pal of mine who had had a sticky night out with the P.E.N. Club blew in to bor...

Sarah Stonich’s sophomore novel, The Ice Chorus , is one of those rare books in which all the parts come together seamlessly. The ideas, ...

I only have one Mailbox Monday book, but it is a good one! While on a business trip to Chicago last week, I had time for a quick visit to ...

Slovenia was a toddler of a country when Erica Johnson arrived there in 1993 to marry her black-haired poet lover, Aleš Debeljak. Sloveni...