"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer." So says Edwidge Danticat, in the early pages of the work inspired by Albert Camus' essay and, also, inspired by countless tales of courageous reading and writing and living.
How can you resist the subtitle of Grace Dane Mazur's Hinges? It's Meditations on the Portals of the Imagination. Well, you can't resist it. Not if you're book-ish, and especially not if you're also writer-ish. If book-ish was in the book's index, you might see a reference to
Dany Laferrière's The Return (2009) Translated by David Homel Douglas & McIntyre, 2011 David Homel says that he has translated Dany Laferrière's work so often now that he knows how he ticks, knows his schtick, knows his voice so well that he has avoided translating anyone else for awhile. Perhaps that's
Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw (1983) (And my Holman-Harmon Handbook to Literature) I hadn't given this book a thought for my series on Letters for this autumn, but I happened upon a copy of it at a booksale a couple of weeks ago, and I did love my Ramona re-reads (and
Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys (1886) For all that I remembered Jo as being another sort of character in Little Women, one passionate about writing and determined to be an author, there is, at least, a taste of that, finally, in Jo's Boys. The third chapter of this novel is
