A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in Harper Lee’s book “To Kill a Mockingbird” is finding itself as the backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism at school. The parents of several black junior high school students have filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming their children are subject […]
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In ‘Bright Shiny Morning,’ James Frey Presents Little Pieces of Los Angeles in His Way – New York Times New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin writes about James Frey’s new novel: He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one
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O’Farrell, Maggie. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox New York: Harcourt, 2006 ISBN 978-0-15-101411-8 Blackstone Audiobooks, narrated by Anne Flosnik Recommended This novel is about family stories–in this case, the truths that don’t get told and the lies that spring up to fill the void–and how those stories reverberate through generations. Iris Lockhart
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50 States of Literature: Heading On Down to Colorado | Columbia Spectator The Columbia Spectator cruises into Colorado with Kent Haruf’s novel Plainsong: Here, patches of snow sit among blue mounds of sandhill and dead sunflowers drop their loaded heads onto the black-top roads. In this atmosphere we find a land at once modernized and
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Hoaxes hit bookstores – Los Angeles Times It’s a scam aimed at independent book stores holding author appearances: Someone calls claiming to be the scheduled author, relates the story of an emergency, and asks the store owner to wire money to Western Union. Most of the events seem to be occurring in southern California. And
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This is from The Writer’s Almanac, which is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media: It’s the birthday of (Nelle) Harper Lee, (books by this author) the author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), born in Monroeville, Alabama (1926), the daughter of a local newspaper editor and lawyer. She was a
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50 States of Literature: Georgia On Our Minds | Columbia Spectator Tayari Jones’ debut, Leaving Atlanta, is set during the 1979 Atlanta Child Murders, at which time a total of 29 black children were killed. Three kids tell their stories: Tasha, struggling daily to stay in favor with her friends, Rodney, branded as too soft
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Four quite different memoirists help to prove the vitality of the literary form John Marshall, book critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, briefly discusses four memoirs that “demonstrate the genre’s vitality and variety.” The four cover very different subjects: childhood in Africa divorce alternative lifestyle–“living green” mental illness
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50 States of Literature: Exploring in Maryland | Columbia Spectator Columbia Spectator‘s 50 States of Literature series continues with Anne Tyler’s novel A Patchwork Planet, where the main character, Barnaby Gaitlin, lives just outside of Baltimore: The quiet neighborhood outside of Baltimore serves to nestle Barnaby with its “big, tall spruce trees” and “damp, chilly
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Offill, Jenny, and Elissa Schappell, eds. The Friend Who Got Away New York: Doubleday, 2005Hardcover, 294 pagesISBN 978-0-385-51186-5 Recommended We’re stuck with our families, but we get to choose our friends. And although it’s hard to pin down the formula for creating friendship, we all know the magic of friendship when we’re lucky enough to find
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