Aug 11
2004
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
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Aug 11
2004
I have only read the first of John Lanchester's books, 1996's The Debt to Pleasure. This wickedly amusing book begins as an epicurean memoir and ends up as the only horror/cookbook hybrid I've ev...
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Aug 11
2004
Despite being the author of over forty books, including the Newbery-Award winning children's classic A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle spent years working as a librarian at the Cathedral of St....
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Aug 11
2004
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg is the only author to have both won the Newbery Award (for 1968’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) and been the runner-up (for Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth...
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Aug 11
2004
If you read nothing else by Garrison Keillor, at least read the "99 Theses" footnote in his book Lake Wobegon Days. If you discover that you too appreciate the glory of meandering, Midwestern Lut...
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Aug 11
2004
Best known for her Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell mysteries, Laurie R. King is a highly literary mystery/suspense novelist with a tendency to develop stories around her other interests, particularly...
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Aug 11
2004
Annette Curtis Klause has only written a handful of books, and I disliked one of them (Silver Kiss) and was too turned off by the hokey cover and title to read another (Alien Secrets). The third,...
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Aug 11
2004
I read The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life as a child, loved them, and then lost track of the author. Re-discovering Diana Wynne Jones as an adult has been a delight. While I find th...
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Aug 11
2004
Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson books (the series that begins with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging) combine the agonizing adolescent dorkiness of Sue Townsend’s early Adrian Mole diari...
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Aug 11
2004
Caroline Stevermer is a woman who clearly isn't afraid of a little experimentation. Her alternative history/fantasy stories feature truly unusual settings, characters, and resolutions, and even i...
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Aug 11
2004
While Dodie Smith is best known as the author of 101 Dalmatians, she also wrote the strange and wonderful mid-20th century coming-of-age novel I Capture the Castle. I Capture the Castle was a cul...
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Aug 11
2004
Being a fan of L.J. Smith is somewhat trying, as we’ve been waiting for the final book in her Night World series for the better part of a decade. So while I cannot in good conscience describe tha...
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Aug 11
2004
The majority of Meg Cabot's books are pure Wordcandy. When she is at her best (the Princess Diaries series, contemporary romances like She Went All the Way and The Boy Next Door, the 1-800-WHERE-...
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Aug 11
2004
Roald Dahl is best known for his cheerfully creepy children's classics, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, The Witches an...
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Aug 11
2004
Daniel and Jill Pinkwater are my idols. Their collaborations (he writes, she illustrates) have produced some of the weirdest, funniest little kids’ books on the planet (including The Hoboken Chic...
More »
Aug 10
2004
Tanuja Desai Hidier is in a band, has directed a short film, written some short stories, and is the author of the novel Born Confused. All of her artistic endeavors apparently deal with the theme...
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Aug 10
2004
Having read Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, I can understand why The New Yorker asked him to be their pop music critic. Many people feel this was mistake, but you can see why they made it: Hor...
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Aug 10
2004
I used to work at a major chain bookstore. Every few hours, like clockwork, a desperate-looking parent would turn up and announce that their kid had recently turned off Grand Theft Auto for the f...
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Aug 10
2004
Far too little is known about Stella Gibbons. She was English, she has a nephew who has been struggling to get her the recognition she so richly deserved, and she clearly understood just how ripe...
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Aug 10
2004
If you've only ever seen the film version of The Princess Bride, you owe to yourself to check out the totally kickass book it was based upon. My copy (with the complete title: The Princess Bride:...
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Aug 10
2004
Graham Greene's steady success as a writer and critic ensured that he pretty much skipped the standard years of being a starving artist and went straight to solid sales and critical acclaim, but y...
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Aug 10
2004
While the (admittedly impressive) sex and ass-kicking sections of her novels garner the lion's share of attention, Ms. Hamilton's real genius is for creating lavishly imagined worlds for her chara...
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Aug 10
2004
Possibly the first (and definitely one of the best) of the "hardboiled" mystery writers, Dashiell Hammett's spare, sharp prose can be found in the gloriously atmospheric The Maltese Falcon and gid...
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Aug 10
2004
Dune is the only book Frank Herbert ever wrote that's worth reading. Take my advice: avoid the sequels, and only watch the movie for its high camp value. If you can forgive him for turning one g...
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Aug 10
2004
I firmly hold the following to be true: Georgette Heyer was an amazing writer.She is tragically underappreciated (particularly here in the United States).The fact that no one has made a film vers...
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Aug 10
2004
Jane Austen is my favorite author. Her books are dazzlingly, astonishingly good. She took one simple plotline and turned it into six completely unique novels. There is no resemblance between the...
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Aug 1
2004
Obituary writers across the globe must have had a field day when Douglas Adams died. It was a short life, but he packed a hell of a lot of action into his forty-nine years.The Hitchhiker's Guide ...
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Aug 1
2004
The first thing that attracted me to Isaac Adamson’s 2001 novel Tokyo Suckerpunch: A Billy Chaka Adventure was its gloriously lurid pink-and-yellow cover art, which, along with the book’s title, s...
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Aug 1
2004
Few Wordcandy authors are as uneven as Joan Aiken--but then few authors are as prolific or as ambitious, so we have to forgive the occasional bomb. Joan Aiken wrote over a hundred books, tackling...
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Feb 13
2004
Satirical novelist Evelyn Waugh wrote novels that were wickedly funny, sharply critical, and slightly insane. Like his contemporary Graham Greene (who considered Waugh to be the greatest novelist...
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