My mother gobbled books with the the same swift abandon that Cookie Monster gobbles cookies. The well-worn reading chair. The stack beside it her weekly haul from the local public library. How many times that little woman read her weight in paper I can’t imagine. By comparison, I read at the rate that glaciers polish stone. My mind wanders. I get distracted by […]
I’d heard about Moses Herzog. Saul Bellow’s feckless, conflicted, navel-gazing protagonist, but until last week, I’d denied myself the pleasure of his company. I’d read Portnoy’s Complaint, after all, so what more did I need to know about urbane Jewish suffering? He’s a recognizable type, Herzog is, the guy at the party whose conversation drags so many […]
Bloomsbury Press publisher and editorial director Peter Ginna (pronounced “gi-NAY”) speculated during a recent conversation with Warren Olney that paperback books, made obsolete by e-readers, soon will disappear from bookstore shelves. As opposed to hardback books. “One trend that I think is quite likely,” he said, “is for (hardback) books to become more precious, more […]
