The Best American Magazine Writing: 2009

I’ve long believed that a really good writer can make any topic interesting. That’s especially clear in the world of magazine writing. I mean, let’s face it, a reader is unlikely to even attempt to read a whole book on a topic of no interest, but an article, perhaps. Given the chance, I’ll read a [...]

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The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

Sabine Harwood has never much liked living in Trinidad. It’s hot, and it’s confusing. She agreed to come with her husband, George, because she thought it would be for only three years. But George has refused to return to England, so now, 50 years later, Trinidad remains their home. When Monique Roffey’s novel begins, it’s [...]

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Little Women (re-read)

I had to chuckle as I wrote the title of this post to include the word “re-read.” This may, perhaps, with the possible exception of Elizabeth Enright’s Spiderweb for Two, be the book I’ve re-read most often in my entire life. How many times? I couldn’t possibly say. Fifty? More? It could easily be that; [...]

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Sunday Salon: Join the Ka-Tet! A Dark Tower Readalong

Many of you know that Jenny and I are ardent and unapologetic Stephen King fans. And we’re especially big fans of his seven-volume epic fantasy series, The Dark Tower. Roland, the last gunslinger of the lost kingdom of Gilead, journeys through Mid-World with his ka-tet (a group of people bound by fate), seeking the Dark [...]

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Shirley

Charlotte Brontë begins her 1849 novel Shirley by stating that “Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England.” Her unnamed third-person narrator goes on to say that this book would be set in an earlier time when “that affluent rain had not descended.” That may very well be [...]

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The Gathering

This book, which won Anne Enright the Booker Prize in 2007, is a dirge. It is a cry of loneliness and pain from a woman, Veronica, whose brother, Liam, has committed suicide. That death has caused Veronica’s mind to shudder away from her present, in which she admittedly has all she could want — a [...]

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The Bat-Poet

Some of you may remember that I discovered Randall Jarrell last year and promptly decided that I would read every word he’d ever written. Jarrell, unlike many authors, but like, say, Annie Dillard, wrote a fairly wide variety of things: a novel, poems, criticism, children’s books, essays. Reading his work is like being a very happy [...]

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The Crucified God

For Lent this year, I decided to take on the practice of spending time each day reading a work of Christian theology. My first book of the season The Myth of Certainty was a fairly simple read, but Jürgen Moltmann‘s The Crucified God was dense and complex, the kind of thing I read somewhat routinely [...]

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We Had It So Good

Having seen some good reviews of Linda Grant’s new book, We Had It So Good, when it was published earlier this year in the UK, I was excited to get an advance e-galley through Simon and Schuster’s Galley Grab program in anticipation of the US release on April 26. I’d not read any of Grant’s [...]

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Sunday Salon: Blog Anniversary!

This last week marked the third anniversary of Shelf Love’s first post! Since Teresa and I are currently having a wonderful time together here in the Pacific Northwest, catching up (and talking about books nonstop), we decided to celebrate the anniversary by giving away some of our favorite books to some of our favorite people: [...]

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