Dave Astor

With apologies to Joseph Heller, I've managed to catch 22 or more satirical novels during my lifetime.

Fiction books that spoof might be best in small doses -- perhaps one every couple of months -- but they can be a real pleasure. Who doesn't want to laugh while seeing certain...

Literature fans love "encounters" with living or dead authors. These might involve seeing novelists at book signings, listening to them give a talk, visiting homes/museums connected with famous authors of the past, meeting descendants of iconic writers, hearing anecdotes about novelists from people who conversed with them, and so on.

Olive Kitteridge is enthralling and appalling, and it might cause novel readers to find themselves falling... in love again with short stories.

That's because Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer-winning novel consists of interlocking short stories that look at the title character from various angles. Several of the thirteen tales prominently feature Olive;...

Celebrity entertainers and politicians have no problem getting their memoirs published. So a book partly about celebrity entertainers and politicians should have had no problem getting published, right?

Wrong.

Here's the story, which I hope contains helpful tips and warnings for would-be authors.

Back in 2009, I decided to write...

For a book with "Solitude" in its title, it sure has lots of characters!

After recently reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I've been thinking about whether novels are better with large casts or small casts. There are positives for both levels of character population.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece offers...

If you're trying to think of a Mother's Day present for mom, how about a novel featuring a memorable mother?

The book could star a saintly mom, a hellish mom, or a more realistic mom between those two extremes. If your mother realizes she resembles the fictional mother in the...

In my previous post, I discussed "second banana" authors from the 19th century. Today, I'll talk about the surprisingly fair way some novelists wrote about second-class citizens of that era.

The 1800s were of course a time of blatant racism, and many authors reflected that by depicting fictional characters of...

Why do some 19th-century novelists resemble the pre-2004 Boston Red Sox or some current singers other than Adele? This post will explain!

The 1800s were a time when the novel truly came of age -- thanks to literary superstars such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, and...

There are 24 hours in a day. Perhaps you spend eight hours at a job, seven hours sleeping, three hours with family or friends, two hours commuting, two hours freelancing, and five hours watching TV, emailing, "social media-ing," exercising, doing errands, etc. Grand total: 27 hours.

Yup, that's the problem....

I recently wrote about loving particular authors so much the first time you read them that you want to devour their other books ASAP.

This post will look at the flip side of that coin. Yes, it will be about reading novelists for the first time, perhaps liking...

Just like babies crawl before they walk, authors usually write early books that are simpler than their later ones.

After all, creating a novel is tough. Until you get the hang of it, it can be hard to do the Proustian thing. Also, you might have a better chance of...

As some right-wing Republicans try to narrow the gap between church and state, I'd rather discuss church and book. And synagogue and book. And mosque and book.

Yes, many novels have religious content that dominates a book or at least adds a small thread to its tapestry. Some of these...

What do these authors have in common? Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Sir Walter Scott, and Emile Zola.

And what do these authors have in common? Ralph Ellison, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, and Marilynne Robinson.

The first group includes authors who wrote/write...

I recently read Freedom, and one thing that struck me was how unhappy the Patty Berglund character was for much of that excellent novel.

She was mopey, self-pitying, dissatisfied, and passive-aggressive -- a tour de force of negativity courtesy of author Jonathan Franzen. And one couldn't always figure out why...

Valentine's Day is all about love -- and one thing I love is a great novel that inspires me to read the author's other books.

Something I hate? You'll have to look near the end of this post for that!

I recently finished my first Margaret Drabble book, The...

Charles Dickens' 200th birthday on Feb. 7 and Edith Wharton's 150th birthday on Jan. 24 got me thinking about how old famous novelists were when they died. Here are some of the longer-living ones I found:

Eudora Welty, 92 (1909-2001)
Upton Sinclair, 90 (1878-1968)
Saul Bellow, 89 (1915-2005)

People who love novels almost never stop reading them. But some of us need to occasionally take a brief break from "heavier" novels, including cherished classics and the best of modern literature.

In other words, escapist fiction is a nice substitute once in a while!

At least four of every...

Seeking some compelling mid-winter reading? Try perusing the list of books that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction! The winners, as you'll see in the links below, range from classic novels to now-obscure books.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about which Pulitzer-winning titles deserved or didn't deserve that honor...

This year marks the 600th anniversary of Joan of Arc's birth and the whatever anniversary of when America's second Gilded Age began, so it's time for... an appreciation of Mark Twain's less-famous work!

Including his novels Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and The Gilded Age.

Twain, of course, is...

During a single year of the not-great Harding presidency, four great cartoonists came into the world.

Two of those 1922-born men died recently -- "The Family Circus" creator Bil Keane in November and the Joker creator (some say co-creator) Jerry Robinson in December. "Peanuts" legend Charles M. Schulz passed away...