Library Without Walls

Displaying articles for: August 2009

August 17, 2009

The Pillow Book

By SEI SHONAGON, Translated by MEREDITH McKINNEY
Essay by Michael Dirda

A thousand years on, a noblewoman's gleanings from Japanese courtly life still shimmer with beauty. Read more...

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.
Daybook

June 20: Today is World Refugee Day, as designated by the United Nations in 2001. According to the renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, the modern refugee problem should not be attributed to wars and despots but to a civilization that…

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Previously in Daybook
In the Margin

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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Earlier Posts
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The Long List
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.