“All of us are better when we are loved.” The film Reading Alistair MacLeod begins with this quotation. It’s a lovely way to summarize his oeuvre. In the film, Colm Tóibín speaks of the process of discovering MacLeod’s work through editing the Modern Library’s Best 200 Writers project; he
Bergen, Guenther, Kellough, Mosley and Thammavongsa Short Stories in October, November and December Whether in a dedicated collection or a magazine, these stories capture a variety of reading moods. This quarter, I returned to three familiar writers and also explored two new-to-me story writers.
When I was a girl, I walked the streets of New York City with Harriet the Spy. And I revisited it regularly via Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. From a young age, this was a city I recognized on the page, a place that felt real, a
If you’re the kind of reader who particularly enjoys the idea of stories intersecting and connecting, this one’s for you. If you would have enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge just as much if the stories had appeared all jumbled. And, if you loved the film Sliding Doors and the
A few summers ago, I got hooked on playing dominoes. I’d had a set since I was a girl but I’d never learned how to play. Back then, I thought dominoes were things you lined up in a pattern on the floor, flicking the first one so that each one
