A Commonplace Blog

Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (New York: Picador, 2009). 370 pp. $14.00. Kamila Shamsie’s fifth novel ought to be called The Politically Co...

Mark Athitakis reflects profitably on the changing relationship between blogging and criticism, the profit deriving in large measure from h...

Not so long ago, sitting in on a doctoral exam, I was struck by a distinction that I’d never given much thought to. I asked the candidate—a ...

If there is a less interesting distinction than that between “first wave” “litblogs” and “second wave” “book blogs,” I don’t know what it is...

The Holocaust is back in the news. President Obama has fallen into the vulgar historical error of justifying the state of Israel as reparati...

Writing of Martin Amis in the Guardian ’s book blog, John Sutherland asks , “What are the greatest ‘I’ works in our literature? My list woul...

At last a prize jury gets it right. Marilynne Robinson’s Home has captured the 2009 Orange Prize. Next on the awards calendar is the Miles...

The most powerful critic in America is Cliff’s Notes . Gildersleeve grumbled about “tenth transmissions of stock observations.” The thing y...

In a review of Mark McGurl’s Program Era (Harvard University Press) in the June 8 issue of the New Yorker , Louis Menand observes that McG...

After driving cross-country, Stefan Beck wants nothing more than to settle down to his summer reading . He lists two novels (Pynchon, Aleksa...

Tim Winton, Breath (New York: Picador, 2008). 218 pp. $14.00. Tim Winton is one of the most important and interesting novelists now writing...

Illustrated by the Bard paperback cover of Pnin and starting with Lucky Jim , Mark Sarvas’s list at bookforum.com commends eight “literary...

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot starts this evening, which will keep me from recording more commonplaces but not from finishing Kamila Shamsi...

Like many others, I was disturbed by the comments of Sonia Sotomayor, the new Associate Justice-designate of the U.S. Supreme Court, in a s...

The Guardian asked twenty-eight British writers to name the book that changed their life. Given my new-found admiration for her, I was bad...

Elberry is planning his first visit to America, and has listed Houston as one of his destinations. He wants to see my “arsenal of firearms,...

When Robert Stone’s bring-the-war-home novel Dog Soldiers was awarded half a National Book Award in 1975, the New York Times reported that...