Europa Challenge review: An Accident In August
Yesterday I posted a review of Laurence Cosse’s “An Accident In August,” translated by Alison Anderson and published by Europa Editions, over at the Europa Challenge Blog. Hope you’ll click on over...
View ArticleBarry Unsworth
As Cynthia Crossen reminds us in her “Dear Book Lover” column in The Wall Street Journal, on June 5 we lost two great writers in one day: Ray Bradbury and Barry Unsworth. Bradbury’s science fiction,...
View ArticleHappy Hobbit Birthday!
Happy 75th–not eleventy-first–birthday to one of my many favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit!” Corey Olsen’s thoughtful essay from today’s Wall Street Journal points out what a deft job...
View ArticleSpeaking trip to University of Illinois College of Law!
I had a great time today speaking on lawyer ethics and social media to students at my legal alma mater, the University of Illinois College of Law, and the East Central Women Attorneys’ Association. I...
View ArticleMarie’s trip to Europa Editions!
Booklovers, go check out my blogger pal Marie’s post about her recent visit to the home office of Europa Editions, a publisher of mostly European titles in English translation, over at The Europa...
View ArticleMantel’s memoir and mental health
In Hilary Mantel’s 2003 memoir, “Giving Up The Ghost,” she describes her harrowing, physically devastating, decades-long struggle with endometriosis. Doctors failed to diagnose it for years, suggesting...
View Article“How to Feed a Lawyer,” by Evan Schaeffer
For an irreverent look at the world of practicing law from a lawyer who hasn’t lost his sense of perspective and humor, check out Evan Schaeffer’s “How to Feed a Lawyer.” Subtitled “And Other...
View ArticleR.I.P. Mary Lee Leahy
I am very sad to learn that Mary Lee Leahy, a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, who had many cases before me when I was an administrative law judge at the Illinois Human Rights Commission, passed away...
View ArticleGoethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, guns, and mental health
Seen through my 21st-century eyes, the late 18th-century German Romantic classic, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” is the tale of a deeply depressed, obsessive young man who...
View ArticleEuropa Challenge Holiday Swap Time!
Yay for the Europa Challenge Holiday Swap! The Europa Challenge Blog is a fan blog for anyone who loves to read books published by Europa Editions. The idea is to read the books and then write and post...
View ArticleAdvice from Miguel de Cervantes for the new year
What a pleasure to read Andrew Revkin’s New Year’s post over at the New York Times quoting a marvelous passage from the great “Don Quijote,” by Miguel de Cervantes, arguably the greatest novel of all...
View ArticleFrom 2012 to 2013
For several years I’ve been keeping a running list of books I read per year. During 2012, I averaged not quite a book a week and hope to increase that number in 2013. I also hope to read a few more...
View ArticleCrazy clients? Read Elena Ferrante’s Days Of Abandonment
James Wood reviews Elena Ferrante’s novels in The New Yorker, so now seems like a good time to paste the review I wrote of one of that Italian writer’s novels for The Europa Challenge Blog. I once...
View ArticleElena Ferrante is my #FridayReads AGAIN
I’ve written before of how powerful I’ve found the novels of the pseudonymous Italian writer Elena Ferrante. When I noticed her latest book, “My Brilliant Friend,” on my local library’s new books...
View ArticleAmerican Bar Association in Dallas
I’m looking forward to covering ethics programs for the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct at the Midyear Meeting of the American Bar Association this week in Dallas. You can download and...
View Article3 wonderful website reasons why I don’t always read a book a week
One of my goals for 2013 is to read at least 52 books. In 2012, I averaged just under a book a week. That is a fair amount of reading, though it’s only fair to note that most of my choices were not...
View ArticleProgress report: Dickens down and articles published
Recently, after a couple of years of spending way too much time thinking and talking about it, I finally buckled down and read another Dickens novel. The reason it took me so long to get around to it...
View ArticleCharles Dickens, George Zimmerman, and Trayvon Martin
Instead of watching the George Zimmerman trial, I was reading “Little Dorrit.” The long 19th century novel by Charles Dickens had been on my list for a LONG time, and it had been a few years since I’d...
View ArticleCharles Dickens, Claire Tomalin, and backing it up
I’ve just finished Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens, which came out a couple of years ago and had been sitting on my nightstand in a TBR stack. I was really looking forward to seeing what...
View ArticleAya is back!
From checking Amazon and Drawn and Quarterly’s website I knew there were more than the 3 collections of Aya comic strips that were available in my public library and which I read and enjoyed three...
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