Last week I wrote about the complementary lost arts of letter writing and handwriting. Literary correspondence, once such a venerable genre, just hasn’t been the same since the advent of e-mail and text messages. And yet the ep...

July is the month when many countries celebrate their national day: it was Canada Day on the 1st, America’s birthday (of course) on the 4th, but also Algeria’s and Venezuela’s Independence Day celebrations on the 5th, Malawi’s ...

I don’t claim to understand very much about the economics or history of the downturn that began around 2008. What little I do know I largely attribute to the books I’ve read about it, both fiction and nonfiction. Many authors h...

Reading is usually seen as a silent, solitary activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re reading aloud with a child or a friend, having a spirited discussion in a book club setting, or joining in with a “One Book, One ...

Sometimes reading really depressing books can be good for you. From Aristotle’s classic theory of catharsis to the modern ‘misery memoir,’ I explore how encountering literary tragedy can actually be uplifting.   The classical t...