99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 by Anthony Burgess. It was the arrival of 1984 (the year, not the book) that inspired Burge...

You, for instance, coming upon these words not exactly by accident or design. -- from "Coincidence," the first poem in Beca...

"Dear John, Well, if you must commit the artistic indecency of writing about a writer, better I suppose about me that about you....

I've been blurbed! My review of The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt by Rulka Langer is quoted on the back of the reprinted edition. ...

Wendy at caribousmom is hosting this fun challenge again this year.  The challenge sign-up post is here . This one runs through Januar...

"Though Champagne plays an important role in the history of France it does not play an important role in the history of French cook...

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page , who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, be...

I could have guessed before starting Breathing Lessons that the book would involve an ordinary family in Baltimore facing problems in an...

Shipwrecks, Monsters, and Mysteries of the Great Lakes by Ed Butts. This is a short book with 10 stories of Great Lakes adventures, inc...

"As far back as the records go, the people of the land now known as France have thought of food in terms of its taste more often than...

"1984 has arrived, but Orwell's glum prophesy has not been fulfilled." -- 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 by An...

"It would have been easy for Brunetti to grow indifferent to the beauty of the city, to walk in the midst of it, looking and not re...

"The body floated face down in the murky water of the canal." -- Death in a Strange Country (1993) by Donna Leon. This is t...

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at The Printed Page , who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, b...

Classic Spanish Cooking: Recipes for Mastering the Spanish Kitchen by Elisabeth Luard I bought this book on impulse because the book i...

John Berger won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for G , his picaresque novel about the illegitimate son of ...

"Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case." ...

This challenge pits winners of the English Man Booker Prize against winners of the Scottish James Tait Black Memorial Prize in a British Ve...

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

The 2010 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, ends today, on January 31, 2011.  The 2011 challenge starts February 1. This challenge pi...

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! I also have a new GIVEAWAY this week and three winners of last week's giveaway.  Keep reading...

The 2010 Battle of the Prizes, American Version, ends on January 31, 2011.  The 2011 challenge starts February 1. Thanks to everyone who ...

Lord of Misrule is Jaimy Gordon's back-of-the-house view of small track horse racing. It is not a pretty view – everything is crooked...

"In 1679, a French ship called the Griffon , the first sailing vessel built on the Great Lakes, left Green Bay on Lake Michigan, boun...

George Passant is the first volume of C. P. Snow ’s 11-volume Strangers and Brothers series . In fact, this book was originally publis...

"But it seemed uncanny that Grace had written this note just before I'd determined thank-you notes to be my way out of despair. ...

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! I also have a new GIVEAWAY this week and three winners of last week's giveaway.  Keep readin...