The Reef by Edith Wharton, with an introduction by Louis Auchincloss. Recommended. In his introduction to The Reef, Louis Auchincloss notes modern readers may not appreciate a moral climate in which a woman opposes her stepson’s engagement to a girl who had an … Continue reading →
The Reinvention of Work: A New Vision of Livelihood for Our Time by Matthew Fox. Highly recommended. In The Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox brings together the work of Eastern and Western mystics, ancient, medieval, and modern, to propose a new paradigm for … Continue reading →
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Highly recommended. It’s difficult to believe how much Kazuo Ishiguro packed into The Remains of the Day, a short (by today’s standards), highly praised novel — a lifetime of work and relationships, the realization … Continue reading →
The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1983. 176 pages. In today’s science-based world, where simple DNA tests can help free the innocent on Death Row, the story of Martin Guerre might have … Continue reading →
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. Recommended. In Egdon Heath, Thomas Hardy creates an otherworld consisting of the elements earth, wind, fire, and water, populated by a witch condemned by a pious woman’s spell, a Christian ruled by pagan beliefs, … Continue reading →
The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson by Kevin J. Hayes. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. 752 pages. While I was visiting my aunt in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, she suggested a road trip: … Continue reading →
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever. Highly recommended. John Cheever has long had a reputation as the quintessential American writer of the 20th century, and this collection, which he edited, is illustration of why he is a favourite … Continue reading →
The Strange History of Suzanne LaFleshe {and Other Stories of Women and Fatness} edited by Susan Koppelman. Foreword by Alix Kates Shulman. Recommended. In this anthology about “women and fatness,” fat women eat, exercise, laugh, cry, love, give birth, and are abused … Continue reading →
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. Edited by Herbert Rosengarten with an introduction by Margaret Smith. Highly recommended. The elaborate Victorian prose style of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does not obscure a story that is recognizably modernthat … Continue reading →
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams. Highly recommended. If finding out your house is about to be bulldozed to make way for a highway bypass is unnerving and life changing, imagine finding out the same is about to happen … Continue reading →