The stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are so consistently good that I almost didn't want to read them. Beginning Megan Mayhew Bergman's collection, I had no expectations. She's been much-anthologized, and has a nice list of publishing credits, but that doesn't guarantee a good match between
Of course there are readers who gravitate towards fiction set in ancient times, with their battered Mary Renault and Robert Graves paperbacks, their beloved Rosemary Sutcliffe childhood favourites still lining their shelves. Harper Collins, 2012 But just as there were many readers who would never pick up a western but
What makes for a love letter during the Cultural Revolution in China would have Heathcliff and Catherine shaking their heads. Maybe two or three pages of discussing China's excellent international and domestic circumstances, then the fortunate conditions of provincial and city life, and those of friends and class-mates. These formalities
If you don't already follow Black Coffee Poet, you should definitely check it out. (You want a cup of coffee now, don't you? It can't be helped.) Black Coffee Poet started his own reading program -- an alternative to the typical DWM syllabus -- in September 2010 and the posts
In my early twenties, I bought Cosmopolitan religiously. But I'm not sure that I've ever read a book that was blurbed by Cosmo. Or, if I have, it wasn't also blurbed by Hilary Mantel. But that's the case with Katie Ward's Girl Reading. (Cosmopolitan + Hilary Mantel =
