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The Pigeon!

Our book today is the 1987 novella The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind, better known to the reading world as the author of Perfume. Unlike Perfume, Pigeon is only a novella in length, and it has no riveting...

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Pope Patrick!

Our book today is Pope Patrick, a thoroughly delightful 1995 novel by ebullient former Catholic priest Peter de Rosa, and it tells the story of kindly Irish cardinal Father Brian O’Flynn, who, at the...

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The Ogre!

Our book today is Michel Tournier’s great, grim 1970 masterpiece, Le roi des Aulnes, translated into English in 1972 by Barbara Bray with the title The Ogre. It was Tournier’s second novel, and it won...

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Eight Good Reads!

According to the calendar, at least, autumn  approaches (in Boston in the last week of September, it’s 85 degrees with the humidity hovering somewhere around 95 % – in other words, very uncomfortably...

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The Persian Boy!

Our book today is Mary Renault’s 1972 novel The Persian Boy, perhaps her masterpiece and certainly one of the greatest historical novels ever written. At its heart is the story of the young Persian...

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Eight Great Books – by Women!

Once again, I got emails – of a far less welcome kind this time, but book-bloggers can’t be choosers. Many of you wrote in response to my recent “Eight Great Books” post not to share my enthusiasm or...

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Six for a Start!

An ongoing library book sale is a glorious thing. The prices are fantastically generous (I’ve been to some such sales where paperbacks are priced by the bushel, like farmstand vegetables), and the...

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Lucky Jim!

Our book today is Kingsley Amis’ 1954 debut novel Lucky Jim, the recent New York Review of Books re-issue of which prompted a literary friend of mine to lament, “Do we really need this? Am I missing...

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Best Books of 2012: Fiction Debuts!

Another yardstick useful in measuring the strength of publishing is the health of its new genes. I have a large soft spot for debut novels (having yanked more than my fair share of them out of talented...

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A Tired Pilgrim in the Penny Press!

Novelist Ian McEwan writes a deliberately provocative little squib for the newly-redesigned New Republic (disastrously redesigned as well – it disappears on the newsstand, especially this current...

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