Meredith Sue Willis's Books for Readers 241-243
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Books for Readers # 241
October 4, 2025
Frances Burney, Novelist Emperor Napoleon Queen Marie Antoinette
Check out my substack blog.
Don't Miss Danny Williams' Adventures in the Written Word
for October 2025 with an introduction to Anthony Trollope!
Coming in June 2026 from Serving House Press:
Suzanne McConnell's
“If You Think Your Heart Can Take It and Other Stories.”
Just published!
My Way: An Autobiography of Hayawo Kiyama by Christine Willis.
Hayawo Kiyama was born in 1936 and grew up in Japan during the
second world war. His autobiography, transcribed and edited by Christine Willis, captures the life and culture of that place and time as well as his and his family's suffering during the war. He learns to fish to help feed his family, and studies martial arts. There was great poverty and deprivation, and eventually the shock to the whole nation as well as his community and family of the dropping of the atomic bomb.
Hayawo's father is throughout critical of his less-than stellar scholarship, and he redoubles his efforts to succeed, hoping to please his father and help his family.
His circuitous route to his eventual home and business captures the life of an immigrant farm worker and his struggles to make enough money to go out on his own and not be dependent on his wealthy employer. Later, after years of struggle, he immigrated to the United States because of the strong dollar. He worked as a field laborer and eventually started his own family and became a U.S. citizen and founded a judo dojo school. This is an inspiring story of determination and hard work as well as a study of working and middle class Japanese in the middle of the twentieth century, and of what it was like for an immigrant in California in the late twentieth and early twenty-first.
coming soon from hamilton stone editions:
Make Forever Now: A Biography of Jean Garrigue by Roger Mitchell
Hamilton Stolne Editions has just acquired for publication in the coming months:
Dorian Gossy's new novel: Errand to Watsonville!
CONTENTS
Announcements
Back Issues
Book Reviews
Especially for Writers
Good Reading Online
Short TakesNotes on Books about the Era of the
French Revolution by Christine Willis
BOOK REVIEWS
Unless otherwise noted, reviews are by MSW.
Cecilia by Frances Burney
Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
Feller: Poems by Denton Loving
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale (reviewed by Diane Simmons)
The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the
Artistic Obsession that Shaped an Empire by Susan Jaques
Great House by Nicole Krauss
Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
The Eights by Joanna Miller (Reviewed by Diane Simmons)
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout
Moon Rising by Tui T. Sutherland
The Weeping Degree: Poems and Prose by Kelly Watt
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous (Reviewed by Christine Willis)
10-4-25
This issue includes reviews of a couple of books of poetry-- The Weeping Degree by Kelly Watt and the latest from Denton Loving, Feller. I try to read poetry regularly ( Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets works for me). I like reviewing books of poetry even better, getting to know some poet's world view. In both cases it feels to me that my prose is improved by the contact with poetry.
The very compactness of the poetic line is a lesson for prose writers, especially to those of us who draft fast, clicking on keyboards. The rapidity with which thought becomes typed words using a keyboard can lead to a lot of prepositional phrases--and sometimes just downright sloppiness. Reading poetry will (IMHO!) make your prose tighter at the very least.
During the summer I've also been reading nonfiction about and fiction from the 1790's and early 1800's. The 1790's, in particular, was a unsettled decade. The American colonies had separated from England, and the French Revolution was devolving into bloody rule by junta, to be followed shortly by Napoleon's imperial dictatorship. I read a biography of Marie Antoinette (suggested by Christine Willis who has also contributed notes on what she's been reading about this period) as well as a book about Napoleon and art, which I picked up after seeing an exhibit at the always-excellent Clark Museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Then I read one of Frances Burney's big novels, so I'm sneezing from wig powder.
I've also read a handful of current books like E. Jean Carroll's book about her successful legal bouts with her rapist (who shall, like Lord Voldemorte, go unnamed) plus some well-received ten and fifteen year old novels (Nicole Krauss's Great House); and the first Nero Wolfe mystery from even longer ago. We have the complete collection of Nero Wolfs in crumbling paperbacks at the lake cabin. I am also continuing the Wings of Fire dragon fantasies in solidarity with the interests of my nine year old grand-daughter.
Fun fact: the first time Jane Austen's name appeared in print was when she subscribed to a novel by Burney, which I'll review in the next issue.
And, by the way, happy upcoming 250th, Ms. Austen (12-16-1775).
Reviews
The Weeping Degree: Poems and Prose by Kelly Watt
The subtitle of The Weeping Degree ("How Astrology Saved Me from Suicide") put me off a little-- like Watt's husband (she thanks hiim in her acknowledgements), I'm "skeptical of signs in the stars," although the creative imagery of astrology has
always fascinated me. Each poem or short prose piece in this collection begins with a quotation from a book on astrology that has been important in Watt's life, and she speaks to this too in her acknowledgments, saying how many people only know astrology from the daily newspaper predictions for how your life is going to go.
She structures the book around some of her favorite astrologers' reflections on and observations about how to live. It creates a curiously gregarious mood to the book through the voices interacting with her voice. The quotations also give balance to some pretty horrible moments in the writer's life.
I think I'm writing all this to avoid the events Watt recounts in her poems:a childhood ripped apart by harrowing catastrophes–father leaving, brother dying, mother turning to alcohol– being sent to foster care where she and other children are used by a pedophile ring.
She speaks strongly but simply of impossibly brutal nights in this place called the "Home for Little Girls." Later sections record the damage and aftermath of those events--her attempted suicide--but also how Watt attempts to live with hope and sometimes even joy through Buddhism as well as astrology.
The book is as gripping as a novel, but the poems, which are extremely direct and even narrative, never fall into prose. You want to read it at a sitting, but the suffering makes that impossible. The final lines of the book are :
Reflect how time
can slip sideways
erase the sad days
with sudden gladness.
Reveal to you the safe haven
of the Ever Good inside you,
now and then.
There is no single epiphany here, but many rises and falls, the constancy of change and never-ending questions. One poem, "Chiron in Aquarius: Tragedy Becomes Comedy" starkly summarizes the life and includes a colorful and, yes, funny section in which– with a therapist– she experiences a vision of how to punish her "pedo-enemies:" She puts them in a Volkswagen van and throws them off a cliff.
"The clatter smash-up and gasoline explosion/are so deeply satisfying–that you do it twice more." Then "Before I go I'd just like to/indulge in a little target practice/with their heads," and they "split like pumpkins." Very satisfying to the reader too. Watt is, for all the horror and suffering, sometimes funny and always witty.
In another poem called "Survivor Rules," she writes
The in between part is called
the Dark Night of the Sole.
Wear sensible shoes.
There is the ritual burial of a doll representing a dead child ("May the next life be joyous. May all your enemies burn with regret.") There is also a miniature story about tracking down one of the perpetrators and having coffee with him, recognizing him, even when he wears reflective sun glasses, by his voice. She attempts, apparently too late, to go to the police and discovers there were no laws against pedophilia in Canada in the 1960's. She also encounters a lot of people who simply don't believe in such depraved behavior (until the Internet, she observes. Now everyone knows.– "...people selling children like exotic pets./Toddler auctions on the internet....")
It's a remarkable book, and one in which hope comes from in the act of struggling to live.
Great House by Nicole Krauss
For some reason, I really resisted this book: I find it harder (as I get older maybe?) to enjoy books that demand hard work from the reader. I want to dive into the river and float on its current. I like the rapids, I like the slow dreamy parts, but I want to let the power of the water move me along.
From the first lines, I was full of admiration: Krauss is a top notch writer, and the stories that people tell in this book are powerful and moving. I am glad I read it, but I don't look forward to her next one. The demanding part isn't imagery or syntax but rather a challenging structure. I did not fully get that structure till I read a couple of reviews of the book--I felt like a student who needed the professor's notes and comments to grasp the reading.
The novel is heavy with characters formed and distorted by monstrous historical events from the
Holocaust to Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. We even have a passing reference to the Palestinian Nakba.
I suspect she's one of the writers who see literature as a sacred calling, and the novelist as a priestess of the cult. One of the reviews said, "Writing — at least when it is great — is a kind of consecration, placing its practitioners in the way of assaults from large truths and perils. This last theme runs the risk of morbid solemnity; everything rests on the execution." And critical opinion seems to agree that Krauss executes magnificently.
Maybe my problem is that Great House brought me down emotionally, but why is it that Thomas Hardy can write about such depressing events and I feel uplifted anyhow?
Here is some of the commentary on the book:
Patrick Ness in The Guardian
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in The New York Times (This is the review that has the quote about writing as a kind of consecration above).
Bonny V. Fetermann in Jewish Reform magazine
Carolyn Williams in The Bucknellian
Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
This book is a nice mix of narrative and serious foot notes. I salute Fraser for both the writing and research, and I'll look for more of her work. I was moved by what happened to these Bourbons and Hapsburgs, the weird sexual dysfunction or psychological backwardness of Louis XVI, and how sad that Marie Antoinette lost three of her children, although her daughter lived a long life. I was moved, in fact, by all her losses. Both Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI tried in their own way to do what they were bred to do, and they were courageous at their ends.
The Terror was horrible, and the supposed humanity of the guillotine a cruel joke-- but
–and this is one of my continuing complaints about so much literature and history– every individual when looked at closely, when given a moment to explain themselves or be explained by a sympathetic outsider--wins our sympathy. Fraser helps us see these people as human beings we might have been.
But the people we read about, over and over, are the upper classes. Yes, one wants to cry out at the injustice of the malignant pornographic broadsides about Marie Antoinette's supposed sexual insatiability, but we never get to be similarly moved by the detailed lives of the market women who paraded with their pikes to Versailles. Where is the passionate mother whose child was hungry? Or even, what is the backstory of the writer of scurrilous screeds about "The Austrian woman?"
We know the answer, of course. We have records and images of the wealthy. We have their letters and we have their appearances in the memoirs of others. We have perhaps more information than we want about Marie Antoinette and her last days. We are fascinated by her bleeding in her final months (was it menopause? Ovarian cancer?) We are caught up in her pride brought low and her courage in the face of her losses and her imminent execution. We know how her friend's head and other body parts were paraded on pikes in front of her windows.
But we must not forget the unfairness of how we really don't know the humanity of the people in the streets. We may believe, or think we believe, in democracy and the "rights of man," but we should know the details of those lives too. Who writes nonfiction and life stories about the poor and the immigrants? Where is this? We can go in this hemisphere to Oscar Lewis's books of narrative anthropology like La Vida and The Children of Sanchez, but he was after how the "culture of poverty" crosses generations. Usually books are written about people who stand out in some way, as criminals if not as political forces. We get the ordinary people sidelong, as servants of the rich or the families of people who escape poverty.
We have a lot of, say, Frances Burney's life in England as well as her novels. She was not poor, of course, but she had money worries.
But who has a well-researched biography of one of the French sans-culottes during the Revolution?
The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession that Shaped an Empire by Susan Jaques
This is really an art book, but it may be my favorite way to read history: from a particular area of interest. This one is about Napoleon's obsession with Rome and the art of the Roman Empire, which was apparently his inspiration for his own emperor-ship.
He collects art from every country he visits–Egypt and the European countries, but especially Rome. When he conquers a place, he takes the best paintings and sculptures and jewelry and ideas for architecture to Paris.
He wants ancient Roman triumphal arches and buildings, but bigger and grander. He starts traditions like casting medallions and coins with himself as a caesar, marbles of himself nude like classical statures of Rome and Greece. He actually read a lot of history to figure out how to create his regime in organization and appearance.
Like most art books, this one has an overwhelming amount of detail and the footnotes and illustrations (and names! and inscriptions on the columns! and the names of the artists and craaftspeople)--it's all too much,really, so I skipped and skimmed anything that looked like a list. Jaques is a pretty fair writer, but she dumps a lot of information that I'd rather have had in the enormous notes rather that in the narrative text.
But you have to train yourself not to read every word. It took me a year to read this. We went to the big 2024 exhibit at the Clark in Williamstown about painter Guillaume Lethière (1760–1832), the son of a white plantation owner and an enslaved woman of mixed race from Guadeloupe. He was one of the painters of the Bonapartes (Napoleon's first wife Josephine especially, and her family). It was an excellent exhibit, but I got stuck on the Bonapartes, along with the intended story of artists and others of color in France at that time. I picked up this book in the museum shop, and followed it like a rabbit, through its meadow paths rather than down a hole.
Napoleon's ambition and his methods of binding people to him seem a fitting topic in this day and age. Napoleon is hardly a matter of admiration, but he compares favorably, unfortunately, with the current leaders in Washington, D.C.
Cecilia by Frances Burney
Frances Burney's Cecilia is a very large book, and the plot and themes are so much more complicated than her first one, Evalina. The basic situation is that Cecilia is an heiress, and in the first half she is swamped by suitors who like her person but her fortune even more. It seems like everyone wants to marry her.
Okay, that's no surprise, but things get creepy when one of her three "mentors" (who are supposed to watch over her till she reaches her majority) quite literally sells access to her to a lord for money. And another of her mentors, who has advised her since childhood is waiting for his wife to die so he can marry Cecilia himself. He about goes crazy when she uses her money for her own projects, and he also sets up many of the barriers between her and her true love, Delvile, the scion of an extremely name-proud family. This young man loves Cecilia, and his family could use her money-- but her uncle, who left her his fortune, says that whoever marries her only gets the money if he changes his name to hers! Pretty interesting for the 18th century!
So that's the set up. In the middle of the book I suddenly realized I wasn't sure if Cecilia was going to end up with Delvile, the obvious male romantic lead, and I wasn't sure I liked him anyhow. I wasn't always sure about Cecilia, either, but her name is the title. Also, she fights so
hard to be honorable and rational, and to do right. She also wants to be loved, especially by the mother figure, Delvile's mom.
The big problems with this rather wonderful novel for a twenty-first century reader are (a ) how long it is and how endlessly the dialogue flows, and that is related to (b) how extremely differently people did things in the last quarter of the 1700's and now. The woes of women are not too surprising, but the crudeness of the humor is, and the gentlefolk's delight in "wit" (which causes most of the endless dialogue mentioned above)--a lot of this gets tiresome fast.
The book's energy, though, is extraordinary, and the relative lack of prudishness is refreshing. You can make a case that Cecilia is terrified of having sex, but the centrality of family, class, and filthy lucre are so up-front that physical sex seems almost minor.
There is also, especially in the second half, a lot of operatic emoting--people having bouts of temporary insanity, for example. Part of this is just style. Part is that Burney was a playwright as well as a novelist, and liked her comedy as farce and her big scenes to have plenty of acting. She also liked exaggerated if not over the top characters. Many of her characters could pop right out of Dickens and certainly Smollett, Fielding, et alia. I tend to read fast when things go on too long for my attention span, but I never thought of not finishing, partly because the book is strongly structured, with a solid romantic love story and interesting characters who are not stereotypes.
Perhaps the most interesting person in a book full of interesting persons, is Mrs. Delvile (who is a cousin of husband, and even though she hates her husband is equal to him in her worship of bloodlines). She, like her son loves Cecilia, and in the end, she and her son both make enough changes for a mostly happy ending.
Meanwhile Cecilia, to my delight, is anything but passive. She meets people of many types, tries to find a way to use her fortune for good, to help people, while continuing of course to be a lady. The novel feels much more open to the world than, say, some of Jane Austen. There are duels and cross country carriage dashes, and drinking parties and a very public suicide.
I'm a fan. And I'll even go so far as to recommend it to those of you who don't mind skimming the parts that bore you.
Feller: Poems by Denton Loving
Nobody makes me happy to be part of the natural world like Denton Loving.
There's no sentimentality and very little anthropomorphizing–his animals and plants seem written about to make us understand what it is to be them. Once it's a rare orchid, once a Rosy Maple Moth "Resting from the rough work of pollination/ and procreation...."
I especially like "When We Were Sheep." We "...stomped his fields of leeks/eating as we went,/tromping what we left." Of course, all the poems aren't about animals–although the ones about people are rarely very far from the weather and the
places we live and the lives we share our lives with.
One poem, "The Word of the Day is Largesse," appears to start as word study, then makes forays into mythology, and ends with a recipe for cooking backbone of bear! "Hack the meat into small pieces," he writes. "Sauté generous, abundant/amounts of aromatics..." and eventually, "Be sure you have plenty to give away." Poetry that is a marvel of precision without ever being precious.
There's a beautiful love poem "Lock the Moon" (which also has cats and raccoons and fireflies). Some of the love is followed by loneliness, and there is an excellent "Letter to Rilke" which is about mysteries and terror of living fully, especially considering the prominence of the biggest mystery at all at the end of our lives.
There is a box turtle whose life needs saving, which leads to considerations of the long length of the species' survival. Embedded deep in the turtle poem is the death of a sister ("Last month,/ my sister died suddenly, and I have yet to mourn.") Everything else, you realize gradually– the turtle, Rilke's death, the poet's own awareness of death as he sits next to an airplane's emergency exit door– circles out from and back to that unfinished experience of the sister who died. And this is perhaps the most profound insight: that we don't always do things in the order we expect, that there are mysteries around us and in us.
The poems seem to get better and better as you read, and, as Elaine Sexton says in the endorsements, "Denton Loving makes lyric sense of complex issues in poem after poem."
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous Reviewed by Christine Willis
The anonymity of authorship resulted in my being suspicious about the gender of the writer: I went into the reading assuming I would hear a woman's voice, but there were times when the author was describing events that for a woman would have elicited emotional language describing an emotional experience but the emotional language was absent. I read on, hesitating whenever I came across what I believed not to be gender credible.
I realized early on that I have not read about the aftermath of WWII for the common German people. With justified great attention given to the Holocaust, I did not even consider the experience of the Germans who were, by virtue of having lost the war, vulnerable to the victors.
"I," of the short journal-book, exposed the different experience that women had from men as the losers in a war: they had to, as women have had to historically, rely upon their feminine wiles to survive, to support each other, and above all, try to maintain a forward-looking view for their future. Men, German men, could not be depended upon to protect and provide for the German women; in fact, they were pathetic, dirty, and emaciated compared with their uniformed former peak.
"I" learned what it means to be human in a world of starvation, "Nothing will ripen here; hungry people will harvest everything before its time." Cold taught that, "…other people's furniture burns better than your own." "I" witnessed and became the actions of human baseness.
Because of the nature of anonymity, the author was able to shed many of the characteristics of culture that exist to protect us from being excluded from the group. The understanding that "I" expressed, deep and unadorned, revealed our true nature.
In the end, "I only know that I want to survive – against all sense and reason, just like an animal."
Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
This was hard to put down, and I even learned something about the law. I certainly
cheered for E. Jean and her her team as they win their suit against Mr.Trump. On the other hand, even though I truly enjoyed her triumph, I didn’t like E. Jean as much as I wanted to. She is very smart and endured terrible things, but she is also deeply into designer clothes. She boasts of how an expensive suit lasts and and what bargains she got. Her list of what was in her 12 suitcases when she went to a hotel to prep for the second trial was pretty boring.
That is, the care with which she and her team planned what she would wear was interesting, but the list was long, very long.
She is also a name dropper, and appears truly to believe the fascinating people she knows in New York are better than all the people the rest of us know. She has too many trophy friends: Carol Martin and Lisa Birnbach and Hunter S. Thompson--another long list.
She is also enthusiastic and entertaining--which does lend shock to her story when we realize how much damage was done to her by the dressing room rape.
It is a well-structured book, easy to read in an odd way as if she didn't want to burden us, or admit her own status as a victim. But this is perhaps taste, and certainly her conscious choice of how to write the book. For me the breezy tone works best in the courtroom scenes where she uses passages of trial transcript–--this was extremely well done.
The book is about a nasty crime and the mechanisms of winning a suit against a powerful man. Overlying that is the story of E. Jean the sorority girl from Indiana who came to NYC and made good.
She manages to make it all completely accessible and entertaining.
Short Takes
Notes on Books about Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and the French Revolution from Christine Willis
I have read the following four books recently on Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and the French Revolution:
Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser
Louis XVI by John Hardman
The Road from Versailles by Munro Price
Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen, The Untold Love Story by Evelyn Farr
If I can find any others that will broaden my knowledge without breaking my spirit (I mean, I don't want to read more about the French Revolution unless it is readable), I'll read them, too.
I did find the love story particularly rewarding to read: it is probably the least well written of the four, but Farr footnotes it well and builds a case for the relationship [between Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen] to really have happened, whereas the others reported the relationship as probable.
Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout
A quintessential lake house read from a huge collection of paperbacks, mostly with crumbly pages. This was the first Nero Wolfe novel, written and set in the nineteen thirties. I read it just two years ago or so (see my remarks here), but enjoyed it anyhow. Rex Stout was writing more elaborately then than in later books, and it is such fun to see what is already fixed. In this one, Wolfe himself feels younger, a little more communicative, insisting on himself as an intuitive genius rather than a reasoning one. Archie Goodwin is wildly sexist/ethnicist etc., and at least one of Wolfe's little games to get the information he wants is really a cruel practical joke (fake highway robbery) and surely illegal.
But already fixed in their paces: Fritz cooking delicious things in the kitchen, Horstman upstairs with the orchids, Wolfe never leaving home, the yellow pajamas and shirts, the beer. Such a weirdly comforting world.
Moon Rising by Tui Sutherland
# 6 of the Wings of Fire dragon novels. Moonwatcher goes to the new dragon school run by our friends Clay, Tsunami, Sunny, et alia from the first books. So here our point of view character is Moonwatcher, a nightwing dragonet whose mother has carefully kept her away from other Nightwings, and it turns out (for reasons explained in the novel) that that she has visions of the future and can read minds. A new 'winglet,' that would be a group of friends, is formed. Old nemeses show up, and the story moves fast, sets up tons of plot points for the next few books, and it is, as usual, a lot of fun. It helps to have a nine year old grand-daughter to discuss it with.
A nice technical move: mind reading gives us some of what an omniscient novel can dol–we get lots of dialogue and also a lot of what's going on in people's heads.
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
This very small book is set in Cambridge Great Britain, in a tiny college where the men are supposed to stay celibate. Fred falls hard–after a bicycling accident– for Daisy, who is working class and urban. She has just been thrown out of nursing school (actually more like LPN practical nursing school), and is very stolid and hard working. She's on the verge of going ahead and having sex with an unpleasant newspaper man who seems convenient, but she is saved from this, after a fashion, by the bicycle accident. She and Fred are separated, and come back together in a lovely semi-happy ending–Daisy goes illegitimately onto the premises of the no-females college of celibates to help the old blind master.
There are eccentric university characters, odd discussions about the scientific worthiness of the atom (it's set in 1912) .The whole story is full of mild surprises–one whole chapter consists of a science don who writes ghost stories reading one aloud.
A real, if choppy delight.
The Eights by Joanna Miller Reviewed by Diane Simmons
In the aftermath of World War I, our four young protagonists are among the first women to be admitted to Oxford. We quickly see that each of the four, (who live on corridor eight,) embodies a particular problem of the time. Otto, posh daughter of an old family, goes in for the type of high-jinx –climbing out of windows after curfew, etc—that is reminiscent of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. But though she seems to be a typical entitled rich girl, she has been profoundly affected by horrific experiences in a wartime hospital.
Beatrice, raised in a household of passionate feminists –“Votes for Women!” –can't stand her mother and realizes she is a lesbian. Marianne, the seemingly mousy daughter of a pastor, is living with a secret, the result of a carefree moment of passion on Armistice night. And rich, pretty Dora, who, for three years, has mourned the loss of her fiancé, killed in France, now sees him, across a room at Oxford, very much alive.
I enjoyed the lively writing and also what felt like a seriously-researched understanding of how people—especially women-- lived and felt in this post-World War I moment of change. Because there was so much to admire, I was a little sorry that the best-friends-forever theme so often made me feel that I was reading a book for teens.
Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard
(image from the Quentin Tarantino movie Jackie Brown)This is the one the Quentin Tarantino movie Jackie Brown was based on, and I think I want to see the movie. The fun here is a cast of thieves analyzing each other and making calculations. The two least rotten and probably nicest characters come out on top in the end, with a freaking lot of cold blooded killing along the way. But, hey, why do you think Tarantino wanted to film it?
A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale reviewed by Diane Simmons
Harry, a shy, upper-crust Brit, a wealthy man who has never worked, enters a marriage of convenience with a woman, then finds himself in a rather brutal affair with a man. Word gets out and Harry must leave Britain for Canada, joining a boatload of "third sons" who are going out to party and hunt. On the boat, he meets another brutalist who will play a role in what happens to Harry in Saskatchewan.
Unlikely as the whole thing seems, Harry turns into a rather passionate pioneer/farmer and gets his homestead of 160 acres. There he is befriended by a set of siblings, an adult brother and sister, themselves escaping from the shame of indiscretions.
And then the guy from the boat comes back.
Yes, it gets a little netflix-y, but I kept reading. I was interested in what felt like a well-researched portrait Canadian homesteaders, especially as life was upended by World War I and the Spanish flu.
Good Reading Online
Danny Williams' Adventures in the Written Word for October 2025 with an introduction to Anthony Trollope!
Fatima Shaik's essay about New Orleans on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina--at Oprah Daily.
Norman Danzig's newest story has just been published in The Blue Lake Review. It is a powerful piece about how suffering can make people punish each other and suffer more. It's called "The Whore and the Fire Eater."
New poems at Barbara Crooker's web site!
Especially for Writers
Excellent piece on epistolary novels.
Fall 2025 Literary News from Ed Davis--for everyone, but with an emphasis on southern Ohio.
Announcements
Just published!
My Way: An Autobiography of Hayawo Kiyama by Christine Willis.
Hayawo Kiyama was born in 1936 and grew up in Japan during the second world war. His autobiography, transcribed and edited by Christine Willis, captures the life and culture of that place and time as well as his and his family's suffering during the war. He learns to fish to help feed his family, and studies martial arts. There was great poverty and deprivation, and eventually the shock to the whole nation as well as his community and family of the dropping of the atomic bomb.
Hayawo's father is throughout critical of his less-than stellar scholarship, and he redoubles his efforts to succeed, hoping to please his father and help his family.
His circuitous route to his eventual home and business captures the life of an immigrant farm worker and his struggles to make enough money to go out on his own and not be dependent on his wealthy employer. Later, after years of struggle, he immigrated to the United States because of the strong dollar. He worked as a field laborer and eventually started his own family and became a U.S. citizen and founded a judo dojo school. This is an inspiring story of determination and hard work as well as a study of working and middle class Japanese in the middle of the twentieth century, and of what it was like for an immigrant in California in the late twentieth and early twenty-first.
Daniela Gioseffi's new book of poems Stardust Lives in Us will be published by VIA FOLIOS, Calandra In
stitute, at City University of NY Graduate Center, 11-7-25.
Somewhere the Day Begins-- a new Book of poems by Leonore Hildebrandt is available now. See it here. The poems explore personal, artistic and natural landscapes with tender description and memorable music.Upcoming and a special offer from Paul Rabinowitz--a new book Syncopated Rhythms : "Syncopated Rhythms brings the subtexts of the ordinary into sharp relief— the rhythms of daily lives interrupted by a walk in the desert, a woman on the subway, a bear eating out of someone’s hand. With strong poetic voice and lyrical vision, Rabinowitz takes his readers on a memorable journey through a series of 13 short stories: part poem, part prose, deftly combining concrete images with streams of consciousness in new and surprising ways. Rabinowitz’s depictions of cities are as compelling as his observations about art, sushi dinners, or a Netflix show. As a storyteller Rabinowitz masterfully depicts the wounded topography of a soul-searching odyssey that transcends traditional literary narrative."
Book Review Magazine 09 (Issue 8) is now published and available worldwide in both paperback and digital formats. You can find it in libraries, bookstores, and major online platforms. Order your copy here: Book Review Magazine 09 .
Available soon! Roger Mitchell's new book Make Forever Now:
Jean Garrigue led the life of a bohemian woman of letters—her anchoring base was New York City, encircled with what we’d call today a “chosen family” of fellow writers, musicians, and artists. A widely published poet, critic, and anthologist, she also maintained daily correspondence with her internationally-dispersed network including Josephine Herbst, Conrad Aiken, Stanley Moss, Arthur Gregor, Alfred Chester, Richard Eberhart. Roger Mitchell’s rich, intelligent portrait of her life draws deeply on over forty years’ worth of these letters to reveal the writing world she inhabited and the vivid personality she brought to both her friendships and her work. “Jean’s métier was the letter,” (585) Mitchell observes, and this exhaustively researched biography draws brilliantly on Garrigue’s correspondence with her teachers, lovers, friends, and family to explore how “the poems, stories, and essays … came to be.” (Preface). Here is “history out in the open”—a phrase from Garrigue’s personal correspondence that captures the ethos and integrity of this excellent book.
Elizabeth Dodd, author of Horizon’s Lens
Buying Books Mentioned in This Newsletter
A not-for-profit (B-Corp) alternative to Amazon.com is Bookshop.org which sends a percentage of every sale to a pool of brick-and-mortar bookstores. You may also direct the donation to a bookstore of your choice. Lots of individuals have storefronts there, too, including me.
If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from your public library as either a hard copy or as an e-book.
You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore. To find a bricks-and-mortar store, click the "shop indie" logo left. Kobobooks.com sells e-books for independent brick-and-mortar bookstores.
The largest unionized bookstore in America has a web store at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.
I have a lot of friends and colleagues who despise Amazon. There is a discussion about some of the issues back in Issue # 184, as well as even older comments from Jonathan Greene and others here.
Another way to buy books online, especially used books, is to use Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder gives the price with shipping and handling, so you can see what you really have to pay. Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores.
Ingrid Hughes suggests another "great place for used books which sometimes turn out to be never-opened hard cover books is Biblio. She says, "I've bought many books from them, often for $4 including shipping."
If you use an electronic reader (all kinds), don't forget free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics (copyrights pre-1927). Also free from the wonderful folks at Standard E-books are redesigned versions from the Gutenberg Project and elsewhere upgraded with better fonts and layout and ease of reading.
Paperback Book Swap is a postage-only way to trade physical books with other readers.
Responses to This Newsletter
Please send responses to this newsletter directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you say otherwise, your letter may be edited for length and published in this newsletter. Recommendations for reading are especially appreciated.
License
Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from Meredith Sue Willis. Some individual contributors may have other licenses.
Meredith Sue Willis Home
Meredith Sue Willis, the producer of this newsletter, is a writer, teacher and enthusiastic reader. Her books have been published by Charles Scribner's Sons, HarperCollins, Ohio University Press, Mercury House, West Virginia University Press, Monteymayor Press, Teachers & Writers Press, Mountain State Press, Hamilton Stone Editions, and others. She teaches at New York University's School of Professional Studies.
.BACK ISSUES
#241 Kelly Watt. E. Jean Carroll, Frances Burney, Penelope Fitzgerald, Denton Loving, Patrick Gale, Nicole Krauss, Elmore Leonard, Joanna Miller. Reviews by Diane Simmons and Christine Willis.
#240 Frances Burney, Elmore Leonard, Mishima, Proulx,, Hardy, Michelle Tea, David Prather, Haruki Murakami, S.A. Cosby, Robin Hobb, Angie Kim, Scott Turow, and many more. Reviews by Joe Chuman, Kathie Giorgio, Edwina Pendarvis, Diane Smmons, Danny Williams.
#239 Jane Austen, Octavia Butler, Charles W. Chestnutt, Emma Cline, J.M. Coetzee, Melody Gee, Nnedi Okorafor, Stephen Spotswoord, Bryan Stevenson, Laura Tillman, Amor Towels, Mark Twain, Yu Miri. Reviews by Edwina Pendrvis, Elena L. Perez, Diane Simmons and Christine Willis.
#238 Percival Everett, Diane Simmons,Alice McDermott, Cherrie Moraga, Anne McCaffrey, Tui Sutherland, Edith Wharton, James M. Cain, Margaret Atwood, Albert Camu, Caleb Carr, Tony Hillerman, Shirley Jackson. Elaine Pagels. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Fay Martin.
#237 Stephen L. Carter, Gabrielle Korn, Rachel Kushner, Neal Stephenson, Thomas Hardy, Dreama Frisk, Margery Sharp, Valerie Nieman, Elizabeth Catte, Chris Colfer, Lisa Scottoline, John Grisham, reviews by Christine Willis, Danny Williams, & Rose Culbreth.
#236 Sabaa Tahir, Rebecca Roanhorse, Julian Barnes, Jane Austen, Brandon Taylor, Joshua Leifer, Pauletta Hansel, Carter Sickel, Stephen King, and reviews by Joe Chuman, Elaine Durbach, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, Joel Weinberger, Danny Williams--and more!
#235 James Lee Burke; Kate DiCamillo; Donna Meredith; Elana Ferrante; Tana French; Joe Conason; Nadine Gordimer; Jamaica Kincaid; Ian McEwan; Cat Pleska, Illyon Woo; with reviews by Joe Chuman and Edwina Pendarvis; and more!
#234 Robert Graves, Kathy Manley, Soman Chainani, Marie Tyler McGraw, James Welch, Elmore Leonard, Jennifer Browne, Dennis Lehane, Primo Levi, Elmore Leonard, James McBride. Reviews by Martha Casey, Dreama Frisk, and Diane Simmons--and a poem by Dreama Frisk!
#233 Ursula LeGuin, Ford Madox Ford, Elmore Leonard, Deborah Clearman, Susan Abulhawa, Agatha Christie, Oscar Silver, Jeff Lindsay, Linda Parsons, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Philip Roth, Lisa Scottoline. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Felicia Mitchell.
#232 Jim Minick, Clarice Lispector, The Porch Poems, George du Maurier, Louise Fitzhugh, Natalia Ginzburg, Marilynne Robinson; Kathleen Watt; Hambly, Connelly, Alison Hubbard, Imogen Keeper, James McBride, Jenny Offill. Reviews by Hilton Obenzinger, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, Suzanne McConnell, and Christine Willis.
#231 Triangle shirtwaist fire, Anthony Burgess, S.A. Cosby, Eva Dolan, Janet Campbell Hale, Barbara Hambly, Marc Harshman, P.D. James, Michael Lewis, Mrs. Oliphant, Paul Rabinowitz, Nora Roberts, Strout, Tokarczuk. Review by Dreama Frisk.
#230 Henry Adams, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Jonathan Lethem, Magda Teter, Mary Jennings Hegar, Chandra Prasad, Timothy Russell, Carter Taylor Seaton, Edna O'Brien, Martha Wells, Thomas Mann, Arnold Bennett, and more. Reviews by Mary Lucille DeBerry, Joe Chuman, John Loonam, Suzanne McConnell, and Edwina Pendarvis.
#229 John Sandford, Dr. J. Nozipo Maraire, Rex Stout; Larry Schardt; Martha Wells; Henry Makepeace Thackery; about Edvard Munch;Erik Larson. Reviews and interviews by John Loonam and Diane Simmons.
#228 Edward P. Jones, Denton Loving, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. Lee Martin, Jesmyn Ward, Michelle Zauner, Valérie Perrin, Philip K. Dick, Burt Kimmelman. Reviewes by Ernie Brill, Joe Chuman, Eddy Pendarvis, Diane Simmons, & Danny Williams.
#227 Cheryl Denise, Larissa Shmailo, Eddy Pendarvis, Alice McDermott, Kelly Watt, Elmore Leonard, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Suzy McKee Charnas, and more.
#226 Jim Minick, Gore Vidal, Valeria Luiselli, Richard Wright, Kage Baker, Suzy McKee Charnas, Victor Depta, Walter Mosley. David Hollinger reviewed by Joe Chuman, and more.
#225 Demon Copperhead, Thomas Hardy, Miriam Toews, Kate Chopin, Alberto Moravia, Elizabeth Strout, McCullers, Garry Wills, Valerie Nieman, Cora Harrison. Troy Hill on Isaac Babel; Belinda Anderson on books for children; Joe Chuman on Eric Alterman; Molly Gilman on Kage Baker; and lots more.
#224 The 1619 Project, E.M. Forster. Elmore Leonard, Pledging Season by Erika Erickson Malinoski. Emily St. John Mandel, Val Nieman, John O'Hara, Tom Perrotta, Walter Tevis, Sarah Waters, and more.
#223 Amor Towles, Emily St. John Mandel, Raymond Chandler, N.K. Jemisin, Andrew Holleran, Anita Diamant, Rainer Maria Rilke, and more, plus notes and reviews by Joe Chuman, George Lies, Donna Meredith, and Rhonda Browning White.
#222 Octavia Butler, Elizabeth Gaskell, N.K. Jemisin, Joseph Lash, Alice Munro, Barbara Pym, Sally Rooney, and more.
#221 Victor Serge, Greg Sanders, Maggie O'Farrell, Ken Champion, Barbara Hambly, Walter Mosely, Anne Roiphe, Anna Reid, Randall Balmer, Louis Auchincloss. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Chris Connelly
#220 Margaret Atwood, Sister Souljah, Attica Locke, Jill Lepore, Belinda Anderson, Claire Oshetsky, Barbara Pym, and Reviews by Joe Chuman, Ed Davis, and Eli Asbury
#219 Carolina De Robertis, Charles Dickens, Thomas Fleming, Kendra James, Ashley Hope Perez, Terry Pratchett, Martha Wells. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Danny Williams.
#218 Ed Myers, Eyal Press, Barbara Kingsolver, Edwidge Danticat, William Trevor, Tim O'Brien. Reviews by Joe Chuman and Marc Harshman.
#217 Jill Lepore; Kathleen Rooney; Stendhal; Rajia Hassib again; Madeline Miller; Jean Rhys; and more. Reviews and recommendations by Joe Chuman, Ingrid Hughes, Peggy Backman, Phyllis Moore, and Dan Gover.
#216 Rajia Hassib; Joel Pechkam; Robin Hobb; Anne Hutchinson; James Shapiro; reviews by Joe Chuman and Marc Harshman; Fellowship of the Rings
#215 Julia Alvarez, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Anne Brontë, James Welch, Veronica Roth, Madeline Martin, Barack Obama, Jason Trask, Katherine Anne Porter & more
#214 Brit Bennet, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Robin Hobb, Willliam Kennedy, John Le Carré, John Loonam on Elana Ferrante, Carole Rosenthal on Philip Roth, Peggy Backman on Russell Shorto, Helen Weinzweig, Marguerite Yourcenar, Fatima Shaik, and more.
#213 Pauletta Hansen reviewed by Bonnie Proudfoot; A conversation about cultural appropriation in fiction; T.C. Boyle; Eric Foner; Attica Locke; Lillian Roth; The Snake Pit; Alice Walker; Lynda Schor; James Baldwin; True Grit--and more.
#212 Reviews of books by Madison Smartt Bell, James Lee Burke, Mary Arnold Ward,Timothey Huguenin, Octavia Butler, Cobb & Seaton, Schama
#211 Reviews of books by Lillian Smith, Henry James, Deborah Clearman, J.K. Jemisin, Donna Meredith, Octavia Butler, Penelope Lively, Walter Mosley. Poems by Hilton Obenzinger.
#210 Lavie Tidhar, Amy Tan, Walter Mosley, Gore Vidal, Julie Otsuka, Rachel Ingalls, Rex Stout, John Updike, and more.
#209 Cassandra Clare, Lissa Evans, Suzan Colón, Damian Dressick, Madeline Ffitch, Dennis Lehane, William Maxwell, and more.
#208 Alexander Chee; Donna Meredith; Rita Quillen; Mrs. Humphy Ward; Roger Zelazny; Dennis LeHane; Eliot Parker; and more.
#207 Caroline Sutton, Colson Whitehead, Elaine Durbach, Marc Kaminsky, Attica Locke, William Makepeace Thackery, Charles Willeford & more.
#206 Timothy Snyder, Bonnie Proudfoot, David Weinberger, Pat Barker, Michelle Obama, Richard Powers, Anthony Powell, and more.
#205 George Eliot, Ernest Gaines, Kathy Manley, Rhonda White; reviews by Jane Kimmelman, Victoria Endres, Deborah Clearman.
#204 Larissa Shmailo, Joan Didion, Judith Moffett, Heidi Julavits, Susan Carol Scott, Trollope, Walter Mosley, Dorothy B. Hughes, and more.
#203 Tana French, Burt Kimmelman, Ann Petry, Mario Puzo, Anna Egan Smucker, Virginia Woolf, Val Nieman, Idra Novey, Roger Wall.
#202 J .G. Ballard, Peter Carey, Arthur Dobrin, Lisa Haliday, Birgit Mazarath, Roger Mitchell, Natalie Sypolt, and others.
#201 Marc Kaminsky, Jessica Wilkerson, Jaqueline Woodson, Eliot Parker, Barbara Kingsolver. Philip Roth, George Eliot and more.
#200 Books by Zola, Andrea Fekete, Thomas McGonigle, Maggie Anderson, Sarah Dunant, J.G. Ballard, Sarah Blizzard Robinson, and more.
#199 Reviews by Ed Davis and Phyllis Moore. Books by Elizabeth Strout, Thomas Mann, Rachel Kushner, Craig Johnson, Richard Powers.
#198 Reviews by Belinda Anderson, Phyllis Moore, Donna Meredith, Eddy Pendarvis, and Dolly Withrow. Eliot, Lisa Ko, John Ehle, Hamid, etc.
#197 Joan Silber, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alexander Hamilton, Eudora Welty, Middlemarch yet again, Greta Ehrlich, Edwina Pendarvis.
#196 Last Exit to Brooklyn; Joan Didion; George Brosi's reviews; Alberto Moravia; Muriel Rukeyser; Matthew de la Peña; Joyce Carol Oates
#195 Voices for Unity; Ramp Hollow, A Time to Stir, Patti Smith, Nancy Abrams, Conrad, N.K. Jemisin, Walter Mosely & more.
#194 Allan Appel, Jane Lazarre, Caroline Sutton, Belinda Anderson on children's picture books.
#193 Larry Brown, Phillip Roth, Ken Champion, Larissa Shmailo, Gillian Flynn, Jack Wheatcroft, Hilton Obenziner and more.
#192 Young Adult books from Appalachia; Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Michael Connelly; Middlemarch; historical murders in Appalachia.
#191 Oliver Sacks, N.K. Jemisin, Isabella and Ferdinand and their descendents, Depta, Highsmith, and more.
#190 Clearman, Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods, Doerr, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Miss Fourth of July, Goodbye and more.
#189 J.D. Vance; Mitch Levenberg; Phillip Lopate; Barchester Towers; Judith Hoover; ; Les Liaisons Dangereuses; short science fiction reviews.
#188 Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban; The Hemingses of Monticello; Marc Harshman; Jews in the Civil War; Ken Champion; Rebecca West; Colum McCann
#187 Randi Ward, Burt Kimmelman, Llewellyn McKernan, Sir Walter Scott, Jonathan Lethem, Bill Luvaas, Phyllis Moore, Sarah Cordingley & more
#186 Diane Simmons, Walter Dean Myers, Johnny Sundstrom, Octavia Butler & more
#185 Monique Raphel High; Elizabeth Jane Howard; Phil Klay; Crystal Wilkinson
#184 More on Amazon; Laura Tillman; Anthony Trollope; Marily Yalom and the women of the French Revolution; Ernest Becker
#183 Hilton Obenzinger, Donna Meredith, Howard Sturgis, Tom Rob Smith, Daniel José Older, Elizabethe Vigée-Lebrun, Veronica Sicoe
#182 Troy E. Hill, Mitchell Jackson, Rita Sims Quillen, Marie Houzelle, Frederick Busch, more Dickens
#181 Valerie Nieman, Yorker Keith, Eliot Parker, Ken Champion, F.R. Leavis, Charles Dickens
#180 Saul Bellow, Edwina Pendarvis, Matthew Neill Null, Judith Moffett, Theodore Dreiser, & more
#179 Larissa Shmailo, Eric Frizius, Jane Austen, Go Set a Watchman and more
#178 Ken Champion, Cat Pleska, William Demby's Beetlecreek, Ron Rash, Elizabeth Gaskell, and more.
#177 Jane Hicks, Daniel Levine, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Ken Chamption, Patricia Harman
#176 Robert Gipe, Justin Torres, Marilynne Robinson, Velma Wallis, Larry McMurty, Charlotte Brontë, Henry James, Fumiko Enchi, Shelley Ettinger
#175 Lists of what to read for the new year; MOUNTAIN MOTHER GOOSE: CHILD LORE OF WEST VIRGINIA; Peggy Backman
#174 Christian Sahner, John Michael Cummings, Denton Loving, Madame Bovary
#173 Stephanie Wellen Levine, S.C. Gwynne, Ed Davis's Psalms of Israel Jones, Quanah Parker, J.G. Farrell, Lubavitcher girls
#172 Pat Conroy, Donna Tartt, Alice Boatwright, Fumiko Enchi, Robin Hobb, Rex Stout
#171 Robert Graves, Marie Manilla, Johnny Sundstrom, Kirk Judd
#170 John Van Kirk, Carter Seaton,Neil Gaiman, Francine Prose, The Murder of Helen Jewett, Thaddeus Rutkowski
#169 Pearl Buck's The Exile and Fighting Angel; Larissa Shmailo; Liz Lewinson; Twelve Years a Slave, and more
#168 Catherine the Great, Alice Munro, Edith Poor, Mitch Levenberg, Vonnegut, Mellville, and more!
#167 Belinda Anderson; Anne Shelby; Sean O'Leary, Dragon tetralogy; Don Delillo's Underworld
#166 Eddy Pendarvis on Pearl S. Buck; Theresa Basile; Miguel A. Ortiz; Lynda Schor; poems by Janet Lewis; Sarah Fielding
#165 Janet Lewis, Melville, Tosltoy, Irwin Shaw!
#164 Ed Davis on Julie Moore's poems; Edith Wharton; Elaine Drennon Little's A Southern Place; Elmore Leonard
#163 Pamela Erens, Michael Harris, Marlen Bodden, Joydeep Roy-Battacharya, Lisa J. Parker, and more
#162 Lincoln, Joseph Kennedy, Etel Adnan, Laura Treacy Bentley, Ron Rash, Sophie's Choice, and more
#161 More Wilkie Collins; Duff Brenna's Murdering the Mom; Nora Olsen's Swans & Klons; Lady Audley's Secret
#160 Carolina De Robertis, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ross King's The Judgment of Paris
#159 Tom Jones. William Luvaas, Marc Harshman, The Good Earth, Lara Santoro, American Psycho
#158 Chinua Achebe's Man of the People; The Red and the Black; McCarthy's C.; Farm City; Victor Depta;Myra Shapiro
#157 Alice Boatwright, Reamy Jansen, Herta Muller, Knut Hamsun, What Maisie Knew; Wanchee Wang, Dolly Withrow.
#156 The Glass Madonna; A Revelation
#155 Buzz Bissinger; reader suggestions; Satchmo at the Waldorf
#154 Hannah Brown, Brad Abruzzi, Thomas Merton
#153 J.Anthony Lukas, Talmage Stanley's The Poco Fields, Devil Anse
#152 Marc Harshman guest editor; John Burroughs; Carol Hoenig
#151 Deborah Clearman, Steve Schrader, Paul Harding, Ken Follet, Saramago-- and more!
#150 Mitch Levenberg, Johnny Sundstrom, and Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns.
#149 David Weinberger's Too Big to Know; The Shining; The Tiger's Wife.
#148 The Moonstone, Djibouti, Mark Perry on the Grimké family
#147 Jane Lazarre's new novel; Johnny Sundstrom; Emotional Medicine Rx; Walter Dean Myers, etc.
#146 Henry Adams AGAIN! Also,Fun Home: a Tragicomic
#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow the River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110 Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99 Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98 Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97 Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96 Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95 Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94 Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93 Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92 Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91 Richard Powers discussion
#90 William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89 William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88 Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87 Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86 Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85 Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84 Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83 3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82 The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81 Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80 Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79 Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78 The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77 On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76 Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75 The Makioka Sisters
#74 In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73 Joyce Dyer
#72 Bill Robinson WWII story
#71 Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70 On Reading
#69 Nella Larsen, Romola
#68 P.D. James
#67 The Medici
#66 Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65 Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64 Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63 The Namesame
#62 Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61 Lauren's Line
#60 Prince of Providence
#59 The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58 AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57 Screaming with Cannibals
#56 Benita Eisler's Byron
#55 Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54 Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53 Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52 Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51 Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50 Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49 Caucasia
#48 Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47 Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46 Invitation to a Beheading
#45 The Princess of Cleves
#44 Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43 Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42 John Sanford
#41 Isabelle Allende
#40 Ed Myers on John Williams
#39 Faulkner
#38 Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37 James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36 Middlemarch
#35 Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34 Emshwiller
#33 Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32 More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31 Lesbian fiction
#30 Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29 More William Styron
#28 William Styron
#27 Daniel Gioseffi
#26 Phyllis Moore
#25 On Libraries....
#24 Tales of the City
#23 Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22 More on Why This Newsletter
#21 Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20 Jane Lazarre
#19 Artemisia Gentileschi
#18 Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17 Arthur Kinoy
#16 Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15 George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14 Small Presses
#13 Gap Creek, Crum
#12 Reading after 9-11
#11 Political Novels
#10 Summer Reading ideas
#9 Shelley Ettinger picks
#8 Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7 About this newsletter
#6 Maria Edgeworth
#5 Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4 Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3 J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2 Chick Lit
#1 About this newsletter
