Displaying articles for: February 2012

"We Revel in a Crowd of Any Kind": Dickens the Journalist

The great novelist, in love with the life of the streets.

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About the Columnist
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World. He is the author of the memoir An Open Book and several collections of essays. His most recent book is Classics for Pleasure.

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now
Big Brother

This emotionally taut novel of family dynamics and the limits of sacrifice presents a woman on the verge of giving up everything -- including her marriage -- to help her impassive brother fight his obesity.

Note to Self

A newly fired 20-something becomes an assistant to a filmmaker chronicling people’s failed ambitions in Alina Simone's sharp meditation on internet addiction, celebrity worship, and digital narcissism. 

The New York Review Abroad

This new collection of some of the best of overseas reportage includes articles from Joan Didion, Tim Judah and Susan Sontag, with topics ranging from impromptu theater in conflict-ridden Sarajevo to a gravediggers’ strike in Liverpool.