I am a fast reader. By nature or nurture, I cannot say. My mother is a fast reader, as is my eldest son (he is a very fast reader). I've always felt it was a gift, a way to read even more in a world where so many of us...

A humanist is a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare, values, and dignity. (Thank you, Dictionary.com). For me, being a humanist also means believing in the inherent ability of each human being to think and reason, and to decide to act not just for one's...

Early in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's new novel, Oleander Girl, the dead mother of Korobi Roy appears to the young woman in a dream, beckoning to her from a bedroom window. Reading the novel, I felt as if I were that mother, an omniscient presence able to read my child's mind...

I love historical fiction. A writer takes what is known about a place in time or a character from the past, and then transports the reader further and deeper into what are the blood and guts of the past. And I mean blood and guts: People and moments in time...

Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost captures the universal immigrant experience -- where versions of paradise are both lost and gained -- through the very particular experience of the refugees who fled Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Lam grew up in the American Vietnamese community of San...

Midwinter is the perfect time for reading mysteries. Settling myself back on the couch with a pile of mysteries and a glass of wine is less expensive than a trip to the Caribbean, and just as restorative as all that sun, sand and rum. This year my January into February...

"Egg in the beer" is slang for benefit, asset, boon. Great short stories offer egg in my beer, providing keen satisfaction and lasting impact with the draw of one long swallow. While a novel may take the full bottle of wine (or, for some books, a gallon of the hard...

"Bibliotherapy won't work for this," a friend commented on Facebook after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I disagree. Books cannot at this time offer solace for the overwhelming sorrow of the families of the shooting victims but for the rest of us, joined in their grief but unable...

I've written variations of this Thanksgiving list just about every year since I read a book a day. One year it was to give special thanks to women writers, one year to add my two cents to the New York Times best books of the year...

I loved The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. But only today do I realize how much of a political statement it is. Gay marriage? Of course! Strong single parent families? Bring 'em on! Wars? Of course not!

How well Miller captures the relationship of Patroclus and Achilles, from their...

Hurricane Sandy took out the power in my Connecticut town. Other than losing four huge pine trees in my backyard, which, when they fell, crushed the kids' play set to smithereens (no deer were hurt in the collapse, strangely enough), the only loss we've suffered is the loss of power....

Friendkeeping by Julie Klam is the book you will want to give all your best friends, not as a nudge-nudge, hint-hint reminder of what it takes to be a good friend, but rather as a celebration of just how great friends can be. And if they (or you) pick up...

I just finished Bring up the Bodies -- and, lo and behold, look who won the Man Booker Prize again? Hilary Mantel won, first time for Wolf Hall, which I loved, and now for Bring up the Bodies, which both mesmerized and disturbed me. Did I love it? Yes,...

A Readallday reader recommended Louise Penny to me over the summer, and with her new book, A Beautiful Mystery, coming out, I thought I'd dive right in.

"Oh, no," the reader told me. "Start with the first book and read them through in order. You'll want the order..."

On the seventh anniversary of Katrina, Hurricane Isaac threatened to hit New Orleans hard. Miles away, safe in my Northeast home, I settled in to read Hell or High Water by Joy Castro. My decision was not deliberate, but it proved to be appropriate, with New Orleans herself playing a...

Having been unable to see the recent Glimmerglass production of Kurt Weill's opera Lost in the Stars, I instead read the novel upon which it is based, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. The opera at Glimmerglass, directed by the fabulously gifted Tazewell Thompson, received rave reviews -- from,...

Pat Barker is back, with another soul-rending novel set in England during World War I. Regeneration is one of my favorite books ever, and the Regeneration trilogy of books, telling the story of World War I poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, will forever be seared into my memory.

Walter Mosley is the one I go to for great reading, time after time, and genre after genre, because he is a writer who never tires of exploring, in all different ways, how and why we humans keep on going.

I just finished his latest work, the...

The World Without You by Joshua Henkin is a compelling novel, an engaging and thoughtful exploration of the nature of family amidst the crisis of terrible loss. Henkin builds his novel slowly, introducing the members of the Frankel family one at a time, until all are accounted for -- and...

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter is a marvel, an absolute gem of a beach read (or park read, or subway read, or hell, sit by the fire in the winter read -- it is just a great read!) that is both hilarious (I laughed out loud again and again during...