Eudora Welty: Casting a Stark and Beautiful Light on the South

August 23, 2011 by ninams

One nice offshoot of The Help and its new movie version, is all the attention that Eudora Welty is (rightfully) getting, ten years after her death. Welty’s incisive and beautiful ability to expose the South in all its beauty and horrors led the way for me — and for many of Northerners — to understand [...]

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Save a Bookstore: Buy a Book (or Two, or Three)

June 24, 2011 by ninams

Tomorrow June 25th is Save a Bookstore Day, with its own Facebook event page and a very clear agenda: on Saturday, all of us who love our local bookstore, will go out and show our love by buying a book at that bookstore — or an armload of books, if the pocketbook allows. Not sure [...]

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G.K. Chesterton and his Unstoppable Father Brown

March 18, 2011 by ninams

Yes, I finally finished reading the complete collection of Father Brown Mysteries written by G.K. Chesterton over a period of twenty-five years.  I downloaded the collection onto my Kindle and over the past two months have been dipping in and out of the stories.  Certainly the collection has its high points (The Blue Cross is [...]

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While Mortals Sleep: So Much That Kurt Vonnegut Left Behind For Us

February 23, 2011 by ninams

The recently released While Mortals Sleep, a collection of unpublished short stories by the late and great Kurt Vonnegut, provides marvelous insight into his development as a writer and his convictions as a human being. Following his own rules for writing short stories, set out in the video above, Vonnegut crafts works that don’t waste [...]

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Crime, by Ferdinand von Schirach: Humanizing the Criminal Mind

February 18, 2011 by ninams

Crime, a collection of short stories by German criminal defense lawyer Ferdinand von Schirach, is a crystalline compendium of crime, laying out in wholly readable prose the whys and wherefores of robbery, assault, and murder.  Von Schirach renders the motivation comprehensible while leaving the crimes mostly reprehensible. He is not offering excuses; he is offering [...]

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“I Am That Is!”: Farewell to Brian Jacques, Who Wielded Words So Well

February 11, 2011 by ninams

Brian Jacques, creator of the mighty mouse warrior Martin — “I am that is!  My sword shall wield for me!” — and the hugely popular and populous kingdom of Redwall Abbey, died on February 5, 2011, at the age of 71. A master storyteller with a marvelous voice, giant imagination, open heart, and unflagging energy, [...]

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Stories in the Palm of Your Hand

January 6, 2011 by ninams

The short shorts in Tessa Smith McGovern’s collection London Road: Linked Stories really are made to fit within the palm of your hand — her delightful and fresh stories are available as apps for your phone or can be converted for your e-reader. For those without the handheld devices, never fear.  The stories can also [...]

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Dressed For Every Occasion

December 23, 2010 by ninams

Summer Brenner’s new collection of short stories, My Life in Clothes, is a breath of fresh air, a lively mix of imagination and memoir with no angst, lots of love, and enough humor to clear away whatever tears may fall. Her stories about a Jewish family from Atlanta, told from the point of view of [...]

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Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: Enchanted and Beguiled

October 12, 2010 by ninams

The Woman With the Bouquet, a collection of short stories by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, enchanted and perplexed me.  From what century did this charming writer emerge?  His gothically-romantic but also penetratingly realistic depictions  remind me of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and Johan Christian Dahl (whose names are also reminiscent of Schmitt) wherein a human [...]

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The Book of Right and Wrong, by Matt Debenham

May 17, 2010 by ninams

The stories in Matt Debenham’s debut collection, The Book of Right and Wrong, are quietly and beautifully brilliant.  Debenham presents luminescent briefings of specific turning points in lives.  Both the lives and the turning points are so real and so engaging that my own life felt transformed — illuminated — by the changes wrought in [...]

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