An essay I wrote on J.M. Coetzee's autobiofictional memoirs, including his latest book, Summertime, has been posted in the new issue of The Quarterly Conversation. (I'll note here that the title and the section titles in the essay are not mine: my...

Stephen King's new novel, Under the Dome, is a tremendously entertaining and often emotionally affecting story about, among other things, cruelty and pity. King has called Lord of the Flies "the book that changed my life", and its influence feels...

I must admit some surprise that the best book I've read about judgement, taste, and aesthetics is a book about Céline Dion. Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste is not only thoughtful and well-informed, it is also...

The Wall Street Journal just ran an excellent interview with the seldom-interviewed Cormac McCarthy, and I thought this advice was particularly sound: WSJ: The last five years have seemed very productive for you. Have there been fallow periods in your...

Ms. P. Martha Moog thought about reading Finch, but decided against it when she discovered that the eponymous protagonist is not, in fact, a delectable bird. She very much liked the gun on the cover, though, and so dragged the book and one of our home...