Let’s just jump to the question you really want to ask: Does Alan Lightman’s new novel, Mr g: A Novel About the Creation, live up to the enormous accomplishment of his first one, Einstein’s Dreams? Comprised of chapters devoted to the dreams young Albert Einstein had while working on his theory of relativity, Einstein’s Dreams [...]

“Literary critics have labeled Michel Houellebecq’s novels ‘vulgar,’ ‘pamphlet literature’ and ‘pornography;’ he has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and islamophobia.” Why couldn’t I have read that book? Considering that one of his previous novels focused on a travel agency that sold prostitution packages to Thailand and that several others contain enough sex and [...]

Alrighty, we’re down to my last group book report for BOOK WEEK 2, and we’re ending it with two ensemble pieces. My second book was an ensemble, so I was kind of shying away from these for a while. But my third book, which I’m currently working on, only has two main points of view, [...]

So you guys know I likes to mix it up, and I’m try to throw out a few hottie mm-bottie book reports from time to time. Well here are four romantica (romantica = explicit sex and language with a traditional HEA) novels guaranteed to steam up your e-reader. THE SWEET SPOT by Kimberly Kaye Terry [...]

2011 wasn’t just a good year for books, it was an AMAZING year, just an embarrassment of riches as far as reading is concerned. And unless something else ridiculously wonderful comes along, I’m fairly sure that I’ve nailed down my top three books of the year. One of them is SILVER SPARROW by Tayari Jone, [...]

I know, I know: “What the eff, Ernessa? Why no book reports since the summer?” All I can say is that things got just ridiculously busy, but I do fully intend to get my full 52 reports in by the end of the year. I’ve actually been reading tons to the point that I’m going [...]

Able to leap multidisciplinary subjects in a single bound, Umberto Eco is the college professor you always wanted to have.  His first novel, 1980’s international bestseller The Name of the Rose placed such seemingly inaccessible topics as semiotics and biblical hermeneutics inside the irresistible candy wrapper of a medieval monastery murder mystery.  Eco’s second novel, [...]

To start, let’s compare Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel The Stranger’s Child to the Boston Red Sox. In 2004, Hollinghurst won the Man Booker Prize (Britain’s highest literary award) for his previous novel, The Line of Beauty. That same year the Boston Red Sox won their first world series in 86 years. Most sports prognosticators predicted [...]

Every hero hears the call to adventure. So, too, then must a critic — perhaps the most passive of all protagonists — discover the stylistic and aesthetic tools needed to tell perfect strangers how to think about a work of art. In Roger Ebert’s new memoir Life Itself, the critical call to adventure occurs after [...]

You’ve probably heard from other writers that they don’t negatively review other writers’ work as a matter of policy. Many writers believe that to do so is in bad taste. Some writers say that giving another writer a bad review is mean-spirited and self-serving. Some writers just think it invites bad karma — we can [...]