The Best Writing of the Week – Wuthering Heights

Sometimes you come across passages that remind you again of what good writing is. I just started the classic Wuthering Heights last night (yes, you need to read the classics) and was taken aback by a passage not just because of the quality of the prose but also by the tone. It was like the…

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I Just Realized Why Books With Pictures Are So Great for Kids

Graphic novels, comic books and kids' books with too many pictures are given a bad rap.  But a surprising new study shows that we are wrong to worry. (Not that I was worried). Parents are often in a rush to get their kids away from comics and over to "proper" books. But now, thanks to…

Want To Break Your Internet Habit and Read More Books?

Do you sometimes feel like the internet is taking up just a bit too much of your time? Do you ever mean to spend the evening doing something productive but somehow fall into a stupor of browser tabs and information-binging? *checks to see if information-binging is a word* *spends 2 hours on Wikipedia, ending on an article…

Two Quotes From a Great Story

I am on the very edge of finishing Joyce Carol Oates' collection The Corn Maiden, and would like to share two passages from the eponymous novella. The first is just an example of great writing: In a dreamlike suspension of emotion shutting the door behind her, switching on a light. Aware of herself as one might…

A Quote on Reading Stories

I read The English Patient about once a year. It's a deep, lovely book, refreshingly free from plot and full of the most wonderful prose. And in its pages I found the following passage. There is something about reading about the way others read that makes me pay attention, as if by reading it closely…

On Books, for Adults and Children

I am a few pages away from the end of Neil Gaiman's latest book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I just wanted to share a quote on books from it, a little gem hidden in the wild tangle that this book is. I liked myths They weren't adult stories and they…

A Fun Little Quote on Reading Books… From a Book

The following is a quote I came across this morning, while reading East of Eden. And the books that came into the house - well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among the ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a…