A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. 224 pages. A Year in Provence begins with New Year’s lunch and ends with Christmas lunch. Between the two meals is a memorable year full of characters (from eccentric neighbors … Continue reading →
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë with a memoir of her sisters by Charlotte Brontë and an introduction by Angeline Goreau. Recommended. The youngest of the three literary Brontë sisters, Anne was the first to die, within only two years of the publication … Continue reading →
America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus edited by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Highly recommended. In America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus, editor Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., presents … Continue reading →
American Gothic Stories ed. and with an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. Highly recommended. In this 1996 anthology, noted American author Joyce Carol Oates collects American tales of horror and/or the supernatural, from an excerpt from Wieland, or the Transformation … Continue reading →
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. Recommended as a good fiction. Angela’s Ashes is the chronicle of author Frank McCourt’s childhood, first in America, then in Ireland, or purports to be. The sadness, tragedy, ugliness, and despair are laid on so thickly as … Continue reading →
Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich. Recommended. In the 1960s, the possibility of layoffs was always present in the minds of the automotive assembly and steel workers at the Ford Motor Company Stamping Plant and … Continue reading →
Beloved by Toni Morrison. Highly recommended. In 275 gripping and unsettling pages, Toni Morrison encapsulates the late 19th century black experience through the story of Sweet Home, a small Kentucky farm, and one of its former slaves, Sethe, who has found an … Continue reading →
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2003. 608 pages. As the Founding Father who spent most of the American Revolution in France, Benjamin Franklin often seems more caricature than patriot in today’s American imagination. … Continue reading →
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. New York, NY: HaperCollins Children’s Books. 2003. 176 pages. If there was one thing I loved about school, it was the Scholastic Book Club. I’m not exaggerating when I say getting the Scholastic catalog … Continue reading →
Cousin Phillis by Elizabeth Gaskell. London: Hesperus Press, 2007. 144 pages. Like Cranford and Wives and Daughters, Cousin Phillis is a variation on the themes that seemed to have preoccupied Elizabeth Gaskell: the changes wrought by mechanization and the different spheres in which men and women … Continue reading →