The February edition of the Internet Review of Books is live now. It looks like an amazing edition, packed with lots of great reviews. I ...

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is an incredible novel, but it is not a book for me.  I had avoided reading this famous book be...

Her heart leaped and abruptly she turned as the door swung open and Lennox entered. His face, set already to an unusual severity -- it was...

I need some blog help! When I switched to my own blog address, everything transferred except my blog roll. I had been meaning to update i...

Whew! Busy week! I have a long Mailbox Monday list. First, I got Hubby a nice book for Valentine's Day (despite his zombie movie ): C...

  A postcard in keeping with my Julia Child-inspired pro-French sentiments.   HOLIDAY UPDATE: Our Valentine's Day celebration is...

E. L. Doctorow’s latest novel, Homer and Langley , inspires an atypical first-person review from me. I almost always write objective, th...

"When she finished dressing, Lucy went to her bedroom window, but there was still no sign of Frank." -- Three Loves by A. J. Cr...

This week's Booking Through Thursday question asks "How can you encourage a non-reading child to read?" There is a lot more...

A flâneur is a loiterer, or a stroller, or, as French poet Charles Baudelaire described him, “a person who walks the city in order to ex...

My Life in France is Julia Child’s memoir of her years living in Paris, Marsails, and Provence; her tutelage under French chefs; her “co...

When, a few weeks later, a news bulletin came over the radio that Vincent had been shot while dining in an East Side restaurant, it was a...

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so, apparently, does my mailbox. After going empty the week before, my mailbox was stuffed to overflowing last...

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is a national prize honoring "the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a cal...

"I'm Homer, the blind brother." -- Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow It this book weren't based on a true story ...

William Boyd was born in Ghana in 1952 to Scottish parents, educated at Glasgow University and Oxford, and published his first novel in...

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” It was Ronald Reagan’s most famous line, but his advisors didn’t want him to say it. He wrangled ove...

Roger Micheldene is One Fat Englishman . An obese publisher on an extended business trip to America, Micheldene (or Mitch Dean as one gau...

"It's easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don't bring you oysters,...

FINISHED! This challenge paired perfectly with my Battle of the Prizes Challenge -- British Version -- as well as my reading preferences....

  Oh no! For the first time since I started participating in Mailbox Monday, no books came into my house last week. Not a one. My mailbox i...

"This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in my life: my husband, Paul Child, la belle France ; and the many pleasu...

This challenge dovetails nicely with my Battle of the Prizes Challenges -- both the American Version and the British Version -- as well a...

Best Literary Fiction Reviews 1) Review of Clown Girl by Monica Drake ;  2) Review of Missing Mom by Joyce Carol Oates ; 3) Review o...

Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays is brilliant and heartbreaking. It packs more raw tragedy into its 214 pages than entire bookshelv...

"You dig a hole in the sandy dirt, and you lower the casket into it." -- Eden Springs by Laura Kasischke. Ooooohhhh . . . A...

This challenge pits winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction against the winners of the National Book Award in the American Version of the...

"What makes Iago evil? some people ask." -- Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion Heroine Maria (pronounced Ma- eye -ah) follow...

He felt that there was something ridiculous in her proposal, and she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous. There was trouble enough in the w...