Hit Men in Crime Fiction Readers can’t seem to get enough of murderers. And amoral anti-heroes such as hit men make for some of the best reading of all.
A Selection of Fine Reading Some writers have perfect pitch. Their voices rise off the page like those of old friends, and their characters sound like people you’ve been waiting your whole life to meet.
Summer Reading Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean your reading material has to be mental junk food. Thanks to the new breed of non-fiction page-turners, your summer reading can lead to mental and spiritual self-improvement.
A Selection of Fine Reading Three examples of gentle and not-so-gentle 20th-century satire that, thanks to the vigour of their prose, their humour and their style, will be read long after the culture to which they were responding has vanished or morphed beyond recognition.
Tales of Embarrassing Moments Where punishment of the corporeal self is said to free the spirit, public subjugation of the ego may free us all. After all, what is a truly mortifying moment but a painful recognition of our shared humanity?
A Selection of Fine Reading When my mother threatened to send me to boarding school for adolescent crimes and misdemeanours, my rational self was appalled. My thinly disguised inner snob, on the other hand, was thrilled. The only thing better than being sent to a boarding school would be getting kicked out of one, à la Holden Caulfield.
A Selection of Fine Reading The interplay between fate and character is manna for novelists and for readers. Is character fate? If so, can we change our character and therefore our fate? Or does fate wield the sculptor’s knife, carving out character as it goes?
A Selection of Fine Reading Novels are a collection of lies, and yet the great ones take us deep inside the truth.
