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Category Archives: Authors
The Elephant in the (Class)Room: Straight Talk About Act Five of Macbeth (by Bethany)
The first four acts of Macbeth come close to being the best play Shakespeare ever wrote. They don’t quite live up to Hamlet, but they’re better than Othello, better than Lear, better than Richard III any day. The banquet scene. … Continue reading
Posted in Authors, Drama, Reviews by Bethany, Teaching, William Shakespeare
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The Frou-Frou Diaries (and a Threesome!): Thoughts on Parts One and Two of Anna Karenina (by Bethany)
I’ll start with the obvious: this novel is wonderful, truly one of the greatest novels ever written. It occurs to me as I write this that when I made a list of my fifteen favorite novels about a year and … Continue reading
A Review of Robert Stone’s Death of the Black-Haired Girl (by Bethany)
Over the past few years I’ve slowly become aware of Robert Stone. I think it might have been the summer of 2010 that a copy of his novel Dog Soldiers made its way to my bookcase, probably by way of … Continue reading
Early thoughts on Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries
The first time I saw this book in real life I already knew it had won the 2013 Man Booker Prize and had read a bit about it. It sounded excellent. And then I met it in all its … Continue reading
Thoughts on Karen Joy Fowler’s We are all completely beside ourselves, with a digression into my undergraduate life.
I have read a couple of Karen Joy Fowlers’s earlier books, The Sweetheart Season and The Jane Austen Book Club, both of which I enjoyed, but didn’t love. I liked The Sweetheart Season because it reminded me of the movie … Continue reading
A Review of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch
What a fascinating enigma this book is. It’s almost eight hundred pages long. Its first-person narrator and its plot are compelling. It’s at times unspeakably sad. It’s not especially well written. It’s about art and growing up and friendship and … Continue reading
A review of Louise Erdrich’s The Round House
I was first introduced to Louise Erdrich in 2010, thanks to my boss. She was absolutely horrified when I told her I had never heard of Erdrich so she brought me several of her books. At first I was reluctant—who … Continue reading
I’m back! A long overdue review of Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe
When my boss gave me this book to read sometime in 2012 I realized that I am very good at impersonating a grownup most of the time, but when a book with this title and cover (see above) shows up, … Continue reading
A Review of Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River
An evil ex-boss of mine loved this book, and for this reason, I’ve always been prejudiced against it. This boss was sort of a wispy person, as if she were made of spiderwebs, and I’ve always imagined that this book … Continue reading
A Review of Christopher Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River
I wrote a fairly thorough summary of the first half of this book in my Yarn Along post on Wednesday, and you can read it here if you missed it. This is a short epistolary novel that manages to be … Continue reading
Postcards From Purgatory 