celebrating books & the literary lifestyle
Today’s post is a tribute to Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer who passed away this week.
One of his most popular songs “If You Could Read My Mind” is a favorite of mine. I once had it on a “create” playlist – songs that make me want to write or just feel inspired and appreciative of the beauty of music.
I’m grateful I got to see him sing this song (and others) in person several years ago.
Continue readingI am a huge fan of The Great Gatsby and have read it several times. I also loved the 2013 movie (with Leonardo), and I wrote a post on that several years ago about how I will always consider this movie when thinking of the book.
The copyright on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book expired in 2021 so it is now in the public domain, making it legal for someone to write a different version of it, which Jillian Cantor has done in:
The book I’m recommending today was a slower, thoughtful read for me. I am adding it to the “Newer Classics” list which is where I categorize the epic reads published in the past 20 years (or so).
This book was apparently a national bestseller years ago – or so the cover claims – but I hadn’t heard of it until my Dallas friend who also recommended A Fine Balance (I will always be recovering from that book) recommended it to me.
As if this title wasn’t compelling enough – Paris + Books – this new historical fiction chronicles the history of the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Company, a literary home to American expatriates and famous writers in the 1920s, focusing on the life of its founder Sylvia Beach.
The book was additionally fascinating to me because it tells how Beach published Ulysses when it was banned in America. (I wrote my master’s thesis on Ulysses.) Very rarely – maybe once before – can I recommend a modern work of historical fiction that is related to the excruciating, yet brilliant book that I studied in detail.
Continue readingContinuing my end-of-year tradition, I am sharing my five favorite books published in 2020. I didn’t come across any “5 star” books this year (I am extremely reserved with that rating). Still, I found several books I loved (in a 4-star kind of way) and am happy to recommend these as some of my new favorites:
Continue readingI took the opportunity of “COVID-19 shelter in place” to re-read a favorite book that I was feeling called towards again:
Atonement: A Novel
I first read this book in a grad school class, “modern 20th century literature.” I loved that class!! And this book was my favorite of the class. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I finished this book – with my jaw dropped!
Time and experience make for a different experience with the same book.
Continue readingThis title is likely to get some attention, as it did laying around my house, but the book I just read, Stoner (New York Review Books Classics) by John Williams is not about drugs at all; the main character William Stoner doesn’t event drink alcohol.
William Stoner moves from his modest family farm to attend the University of Missouri in 1910, initially to study agriculture but instead he falls in love with the study of English literature. He stays on to get his PhD, joins the faculty, and teaches for 40 years. This is a serious novel about a professor who experiences personal and professional agonies but also times of determination and exuberance.
Continue readingThree summers — and 185 posts ago — ago I started “Leslie’s Bookcase” with this post about old books. I had been working on my graduate degree in English literature for several years and was reading mostly older books. This blog was going to (and has) filled the void of reading and discussing books after earning my degree.
After blogging for one year and realizing, however, that readers (including me) prefer reading about new books, I celebrated my first blogoversary by writing about how I loved new books.
This year I am celebrating by choosing my FAVORITE 5 BOOKS since starting this blog. At the end of every year I name my five favorites published that year; the “published in this year” keeps my selection process defined from year to year. So many older books I have discovered or even read a year later weren’t eligible for my annual post. But for this post I am considering ALL THE BOOKS I have blogged about.
So here they are, MY FAVORITE 5 BOOKS SINCE STARTING THIS BLOG:
Continue readingI have not gotten too far into my summer reading list because I was finishing up a slower paced reading project: Lila: A Novel which completes the Gilead trilogy. Gilead won the Pulitzer several years ago. I posted about it here.
Continue readingThe book I recently finished, A Fine Balance, ranks in my favorite reads ever.
This novel is a sweeping portrait of India in the 1970s with its corruption, tragedy, poverty, caste violence, and all the other turmoil and sadness you can imagine.
Two tailors have moved to the overpopulated “city by the sea” for its perceived opportunities. They find a job sewing for a widow, Dina, who also takes in a university student as a boarder to make ends meet. It is ultimately the story of four people who, through shared circumstances, move from strangers to soul friends.
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