Updated 12/13/2025

Late to the party as usual, I earlier watched an episode of the acclaimed, now-three-seasons-old IFC comedy series Documentary Now!, with...

Arthur Koestler died this day in 1983, age 77. His great novel Darkness at Noon (1941), concerning the party purges and show trials of...

Kate Chopin was born today in 1850. The Awakening (1899), a novel, is her essential work, and "The Story of an Hour" (1894) among the...

The news that Peter Jackson will be assembling a new version of the Beatles' Get Back-Let It Be footage is interesting and exciting....

Hawthorne's The Celestial Railroad, comprising stories published between 1832 and 1851, is recommended for the well-known items, which...

Red-Color News Soldier is a book of text and photographs by Li Zhensheng, who between 1966 and 1980, throughout Mao's Cultural...

Yesterday at a used bookstore in New York, I got a Sixties paperback of Letters from the Earth, a collection of Mark Twain pieces that he...

Thinking three things about Robinson Crusoe today: 1. I had a children's version of this from Scholastic Book Club, a severe condensation...

Yesterday I realized a minor ambition of a few years' standing and read Harriet the Spy. I discovered I love this book and I love this...

On Halloween, one last recommendation for lovers of the ghost story.