Books
Into the Garden with Charles reads like a great love letter: beautifully written, full of feeling, a document of an intimate connection that never lost its wonder for the author.
Read MoreOf the major 20th-century writers in English, Patrick White stands with the best, partly because he refused to repeat himself, and partly because he refuses to tell you everything, so that when you read him there is a sense of discovery.
Read MoreJudging by the trailer for The Great Gatsby, it looks as if director Baz Luhrmann’s habitual excess will overwhelm the lyrical beauty and subtle power of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prose.
Read MoreThe poetry of Palestinian author Ghassan Zaqtan dwells in the space between life and death, memory and erasure, respite and continuous travel.
Read MoreAs sorry as I was to lose Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes last week, I was nonetheless deeply pleased that he reached the age of 83. I almost killed him when he was 37.
Read MoreStefan Zweig’s was a dramatic, action-packed, intense epic of a life, but Oliver Matuschek’s biography, Three Lives, simply plods along.
Read MoreSimon Garfield’s tour of fonts, Just My Type, is a rollicking, sometimes snarky social history of the design decisions behind lettering from Gutenberg to the iPad.
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Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else