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No time spent with a book is ever entirely wasted, even if the experience is not a happy one: there’s always something to be learned. It’s just that, ...more

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I don’t have the heart to tell my sons that the older one gets, the less funny literature becomes—and they would refuse to believe me if I tried to ex...more

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contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-cent...more

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I personally find that for domestic purposes, the Trivial Pursuit system works better than Dewey.

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In other words, it's one of those books you thrust on your partner with an incredulous cry of "This is me!

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I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, ...more

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Dave and Serge...played the Fiddler's Elbow as if it were Giants Stadium, and even though it was acoustic, they just about blew the place up. They wer...more

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So this is supposed to be about the how, and when, and why, and what of reading -- about the way that, when reading is going well, one book leads to a...more

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Hey, great idea: if you have kids, give your partner reading vouchers next Christmas. Each voucher entitles the bearer to two hours' reading time *whi...more

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We are never allowed to forget that some books are badly written; we should remember that sometimes they're badly read, too.

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I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rog...more

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All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each ...more

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Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that D...more

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Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring again...more

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Anyone and everyone taking a writing class knows that the secret of good writing is to cut it back, pare it down, winnow, chop, hack, prune, and trim,...more