Essay: The twelve best books of 2018
Here are the twelve best books that I read in 2018: “Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying” by [...]
Here are the twelve best books that I read in 2018: “Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying” by [...]
Just before the first page of Jim Crace’s 1999 novel Being Dead, Joseph and Celice, zoologists married to each other, have been murdered in a clumsy, random [...]
When she and her husband Joseph were murdered on an isolated stretch of beach, Celice's body fell onto the sand, upending a dune beetle and trapping him in the [...]
As Terry Pratchett created his series of 41 Discworld novels, he took his world from a fairly medieval place into modernity through his introduction of a variety of civilization’s [...]
Thirteen-year-old Eric Thursley conjures up demons. Except, in this case, his first successful conjuration, he gets the hapless wizard Rincewind. The result — detailed in Terry Pratchett’s ninth Discworld [...]
When I use the term “feminist book” here, I’m referring to strong, muscular books written by strong, muscular writers who happen to be women. To me, these books [...]
Andre Norton’s 1956 Plague Ship is a rip-snortingly inventive yarn that’s one of her better novels, a combination of medical mystery, anthropological adventure and space gallop. And it features [...]
The traders of the Solar Queen have set a trap for some hardened criminals who are hiding on the planet Limbo. One of the bad guys gets out of [...]
I have gotten to a point that I can’t go along any more with Michelangelo’s God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Great art, but, gee, God as [...]
Brian Doyle’s essay “The Day I Stood Shimmering in Shame” begins this way: Committed a sin yesterday, in the hallway, at noon. I roared at my son, I grabbed [...]