If Emily Dickinson had had a sense of humor, she might have written "A Girl Named Zippy."
And if she'd been born in 1965 in Indiana.
That's when and where Haven Kimmel arrived on the planet and spent her childhood in the small (population: 300) town of Mooreland --- the subject of her fun and funny and…
In 1867, the British poet Matthew Arnold published his 37-line lyric poem "Dover Beach," which concludes with this stanza:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor…
I don't usually read books like this, collections of smaller pieces. In this case, six essays and 23 literary reviews.
I call them "literary reviews" rather than "book reviews" because, in them, Oates examines at least a good chunk — and often the entire breadth — of a writer's work. Her essays deal with the sudden…
Starting to read a new Terry Pratchett novel, for me, has been a different experience since December, 2007. That's when Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
Each time, I wonder: Is this the book that will show the impact of the disease? Will this be the one that shows the…