First published on Publishers Weekly This week, a mischevious book about a crumbling mansion, 100 years done in 100 pages, and the truth about dino...

People often speak of Cather's story about Jim Burden and his friendship with his childhood playmate Antonia as one of our great American novels

I like novels starring professors because they bring back memories of the ones I had in college.

Readers can love a novel or short story for many reasons -- including expert prose, a compelling plot, and well-drawn characters. There's also the appeal of what might be called the "recognition apparition."

My list includes the authors' names, the number of novels I've read by each of them, and my three favorite novels (in rank order) by each of them. If you have different favorites by those authors, I'd like to hear about that.

They were unplanned "Five-Year Plans" for the ages: the amazing proliferation of classic novels published from 1846 to 1851 and from 1922 to 1927. And, believe it or not, one author had a book in both those periods!

Even great novelists occasionally write a clunker -- sort of a loose cannon in a canon. Often, the literary dud comes at or near the start of an author's career.

Do you read so much fiction that visiting a city almost always reminds you of certain novels?

There are plenty of cases where an author's masterpiece deserves the top billing it gets in the author's canon. But then there are the cases where a writer's most famous book is not the writer's best book.

On a family vacation from Wisconsin to Dauphin Island, Alabama, we stopped at Lincoln's home in Springfield, IL to take a tour. In the front parlor there was a photograph of Honest Abe hanging on the wall.

Here are my twelve: Each book celebrates the birth month of an author, a holiday or some other event connected to that month.