Avidly’s book discussions might be argumentative, or they might stay at the level of intense, affectionate observation. We welcome endorsements of and engagement with any books that get you going, from new archival finds to out-of-your-sphere masterworks to a particularly satisfying children’s book or pool-side read. Write here: to recommend to friends the books you’d like to discuss with them.
It was deep winter and dark seventeen hours a day. I was up every two to three hours with my newborn son who had a tongue tie and was not gaining enough weight. There was so little day to confuse with night that neither of us felt the gradual shift toward light for weeks....
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One of my former colleagues used to say that all high school students love The Great Gatsby, although he claimed that most of them love it for “the wrong reasons.” He’s right about the love. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel elicits more passionately positive reactions from a wider variety of adolescent readers than any other...
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I grew up in the North Jersey precincts of Philip Roth and Amiri Baraka, but the literary home of my youth was in the West. My family traveled by motorhome throughout my childhood and I spent most of my summers reading westerns in situ. In the summer of 1985, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove was...
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I don’t play polo. Never have. I’ve never seen a polo match, or particularly wanted to see one. I have been on horseback just often enough in my life to know what one should and shouldn’t do; I am hardly what a certain type of English person might still describe as “a horsey gel.”...
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Is Holden Caufield a Christ figure? It’s a great question, and a lot of people are asking themselves this week, “Does Holden Caulfield resemble Christ?” Is Holden a metaphor for Christ? One could even be more bold: does J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye feature a Christ figure? Let’s consider the facts. Catcher...
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In my last installment, I nominated three actors as avatars for chapters I had read to date, but noted that I did not expect my taxonomy to remain comprehensive. I admit that I expected it to take a little longer to break down completely, so allow me to introduce a fourth avatar to represent...
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How do you like to nap? For me, it’s like this: on top of the covers (never under the covers) with an extra blanket over me. Light outside (never nap when dark), with some sort of filtering of the light that is coming into the room. Some noise in the background. No socks and...
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In my discussion of the Top Ten Most Romantic Betsy Ray-Joe Willard Moments, I posited that Betsy and Joe’s impassioned meeting right after she gets off the S.S. Richmond in Betsy’s Wedding was the closest thing to a sex scene we were ever going to get out of author Maud Hart Lovelace. This sparked a...
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My father died in 2006, which is getting to be a long time ago. I am aware of this passage of time because every year, he would make a collection of Christmas music that he would share with dozens – maybe hundreds – of family and friends. Only the last year, the one for...
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Writers have very large and extremely fragile egos. This is why we go into bookstores and look for our books, pull them face out, and get our days ruined if the store doesn’t actually carry us. It’s also why every time I go to my local library I hop on one of the computer...
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Sarah and Sarah : 8
Jake Bartolone : 6
Josh Joy Kamensky : 5
Jordan Alexander Stein : 5
Jedediah Purdy : 5
Sarah Mesle : 4
Stephanie Lucianovic : 4
Avidly : 3
Brian Forrest : 3
Sarah Blackwood : 3
Megan Stephan : 2
Michael Bibler : 2
Catherine Zimmer : 2
Chris Shirley : 2
Claire Jarvis : 2
Jonathan Beecher Field : 2
C. Wu : 2
Henry Raz Histrio : 2
Pete Coviello : 2
M.L. Peck : 2
Hester Blum : 2
Michelle Chihara : 2
Justine Murison : 1
Colin Dickey : 1
Kathleen Kennedy : 1
Sarah Ahrens : 1
Samuel Draxler : 1
Jonathan Senchyne : 1
Naomi Fry : 1
Tamiko Nimura : 1
Alex Jung : 1
Mandy Berry : 1
Jessica Adams : 1
Jessica Collier : 1
Lauren W. : 1
Will Stockton : 1
Yahdon Israel : 1
Maya Gurantz : 1
Glenn Hendler : 1
Kelli Landes : 1
Kyla Wazana Tompkins : 1
Edward McKenna : 1
Emma Bianchi : 1
Robert Chang : 1
Elizabeth Freeman : 1
Marcy Dinius : 1
Frances Milliken : 1
Caleb Smith : 1
Pam Thurschwell : 1
Lynne Feeley : 1
Chris Huff : 1
Sanjukta Paul : 1
Brigitte Fielder : 1
Anne Helen Petersen : 1
Brandon Harvey : 1
Robert McRuer : 1
Lucy Kahn : 1
Morgan Fahey : 1
Karen Leick : 1
Kirsten Silva Gruesz : 1