2009: The Year of the Book
Something about the fallen nature of man loathes when another desires to praise God differently from one's personal concept of worship.The Literary Criticism
In the Shadow of the Sun King, by Golden Keyes Parsons
A side view of A Breath of Snow and Ashes. Just kidding. Sort of.
Okay, not really Santa, but the next best thing: author Joshua Henkin.
In Matrimony, a man and woman meet in college, fall in love, and spend the next fifteen years finding their way through the ups and downs of marriage. It’s the second novel from author Joshua Henkin, and Matrimony reflects the maturing talent of a writer who auspiciously emerged on the literary scene nine years ago with the critically praised first novel Swimming Across the Hudson.From Pantheon BooksLonger in scope, more ambitious with its characters, and grounded with realism and wry humor, Matrimony introduces us to Julian Wainwright and Mia Mendelsohn, two intensely likeable yet wonderfully flawed characters, who meet their freshman year at Graymont College, a liberal arts school in western Massachusetts. Julian, an aspiring writer, has arrived at college from New York to study with his literary hero. Mia has come from Montreal searching for something new and unknown. When they meet, folding laundry, they fall deeply and happily into first love.
But real life soon intrudes, and a family crisis arises at the end of their senior year that will cement their relationship more seriously and quickly than they could have imagined. Together they make their way through the next fifteen years — through career changes, family conflicts and losses, betrayals and successes. From the university towns of Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Iowa City, to the brownstones of Greenwich Village, the novel moves back and forth between Julian and Mia’s perspectives as Henkin explores the choices and sacrifices we make at different stages in our lives, our changes in ambition and desire, and how we come to lead the lives we live.
Beth, proprietor of the renowned review site Beth Fish Reads, has nominated A Reader's Respite for Best Humor Blog (isn't that nice of her?). While we're not sure how much humor resides here, we love the fact that Beth at least understands us even when the humor falls flat.
"[Narnia] represents a mezzanine between the dependency of childhood and the autonomy of adulthood."Miller provides some beautiful insights into the magic of books (both for children and adults). She explores the allure books hold for children and in doing so also provides a lovely insight into the mind of a child. As an adult, we tend to remember that there were certain books we loved when we were young, but forget exactly why we loved them so much. Miller elucidates those reasons in a softly reminiscent style that is a pleasure to read.
The Magician's Book, by Laura Miller
It did not escape his [C.S. Lewis] notice that people who read a lot of good books aren't necessarily the more virtuous for it.
The Magician's Book, by Laura Miller
The moral dilemmas faced by children in Narnia were Lewis' own.Miller also delves into the art of literary criticism, mostly in an attempt to explain her own criticisms of The Chronicles of Narnia, but they are especially insightful and interesting to those of us who regularly engage in reading and reviewing literature.
The Magician's Book, by Laura Miller
But there's a difference between wanting all stories you read to be about you in the most literal sense, and reading with the hope that you can find a bit of yourself in all stories...It's been said before that sometimes a story is just that: a story. To analyze the author's intent and meaning by picking apart the work sentence by sentence can ultimately destroy the story itself. Ultimately, perhaps The Chronicles of Narnia are best left for the next generation of children to fall into and enjoy the magic.
The Magician's Book, by Laura Miller
A Map...in case you need to find your way around Narnia.
Blah intimidated, they blah to blah blah, where blah and blah passed a blah blah. Blah little blah that blah blah one blah surprised to blah what blah their blah were blah.
‘I always blah a blah to blah a blah,’ he blah blah.
‘I like blah.’
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Whether there was ever a washerwoman who was able to transform into a rabbit is open to doubt; however, some magical historians have suggested that Beedle modeled Babbitty on the famous French sorceress Lisette de Lapin, who was convicted of witchcraft in Paris in 1422. To the astonishment of her Muggle guards, who were later tried for helping the witch to escape, Lisette vanished from her prison cell the night before she was due to be excuted. Although it has never been proven that Lisette was an Animagus who managed to squeeze throught the bars of her cell window, a large white rabbit was subsequently seen crossing the English Channel in a cauldron with a sail fitted to it, and a similar rabbit later became a trusted advisor at the court of King Henry VI.*The Literary Criticism
*This may have contributed to that Muggle King's reputation for mental instability.
Albus Dumbledore commentary on "Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump."
from The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J.K. Rowling
A photo of the original Tales of the Beedle Bard, handwritten by
Dead Until Dark is the basis for the new HBO series, TrueBlood.
Elizabeth of York
King Richard III and Queen Anne
