Published by Harper / Vintage Classics, 1963, 496 pages.Review by Thomas Peak A conventional review of V. is hard to write. There is no plot, not much of a lesson, no real conclusion, no moral to be gleaned. It loosely follows a quest for V. across the globe. But 'loosely' is the operative word. What …
The World’s Oldest Library Reopens: The Guardian
Khizanat al-Qarawiyyin, located in the old medina of Fez, is widely believed to be the oldest library in the world, dating back to the ninth century. It was founded by the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Once it is restored, it will be open to the public. "'It was like healing wounds,' says Aziza Chaouni, …
Continue reading The World’s Oldest Library Reopens: The Guardian
The Guardian’s Interview with a Bookstore: Parnassus Books
The Guardian publishes interviews with people who run bookstores. This one is publisher Karin Hayes and writer Ann Pratchett, who opened Parnassus Book in Nashville, Tennessee, because Pratchett decided she could not live in a city without a bookstore. They even have their dogs on the staff! When asked about what the biggest surprise was …
Continue reading The Guardian’s Interview with a Bookstore: Parnassus Books
The Yacoubian Building: Alaa Al Aswamy
Translated from Arabic by Humphrey T. DaviesPublished by HarperCollins, 2004, 272 pages. Original version published in 2002. Peel away the outer layer of an apartment building and you’ll find a microcosm of life: people living in within a small space with their joys, sorrows, triumphs and despair, just a few feet away from each other. …
The Guardian Lists Top 10 Memorable Meals in Literature
This list combines two of my favourite things: literature and food, from Diana Secker Tesdell, who compiled an anthology called Stories from the Kitchen. She finds that the most memorable were those that were not just about the food. "In literature, meals are often an occasion for transcendence. While researching my anthology, Stories from the …
Continue reading The Guardian Lists Top 10 Memorable Meals in Literature
Child 44: Tom Rob Smith
Published by Simon & Schuster UK / Grand Central Publishing, 2008, 484 pages. Child 44 is set in the USSR towards the end of Stalin’s regime, a Utopia where crime—and therefore criminals—no longer exist. Or at least that’s what the state wants people to believe. What this actually means is that murders cannot be reported, …
Turner—A Life: James Hamilton
Published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1997, 374 pages. My fascination with Turner’s paintings began in the late 1970s. I was in my late teens, and we had just moved to Delhi. Instead of buying me new clothes for an upcoming festival, my mother, very sensibly, took me to a bookshop. The first thing I saw …
My Life as a Bibliophile: Julian Barnes in The Guardian
You will enjoy this paean to books by Julian Barnes: discovering the vast worlds that reading can open up, and the joy of owning books. "I have lived in books, for books, by and with books; in recent years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to live from books. And it was through …
Continue reading My Life as a Bibliophile: Julian Barnes in The Guardian
The Woman in Black: Susan Hill
Published by Vintage Random House, 1983, 144 pages. The best ghost stories were written by Victorian writers, who knew that the most effective way to scare people was to leave something to the imagination: unsettling figures are glimpsed, noises are heard but not accounted for. Susan Hill picks up this tradition, using some of the …
Ann Morgan on Reading
Ann Morgan considered herself well read — until she discovered the "massive blindspot" on her bookshelf. Amid a multitude of English and American authors, there were very few books from beyond the English-speaking world. So she set an ambitious goal: to read one book from every country in the world over the course of a …
