Tag Archives: novels

What are you reading this summer?

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I have started so many posts for this blog in my head over the past few months.  A post about My Age of Anxiety, which I actually finished ages ago and would probably have to reread at this point to properly write about.  A post about Mary Szybist’s Incarnadine and another about Leslie Jamison’s The […]

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August 14

Best Books of All Time?

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Last week, I came upon this article:  “40 Books to Read Before Turning 40”.  I jokingly sent it to my boyfriend – currently enjoying his last few months in his 30s – and noted that he “has a lot of reading to do.”  The books on the list are certainly some I’d recommend to anyone […]

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August 02

I Capture the Castle

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Despite considering myself an Anglophile, I was somehow unaware of Dodie Smith’s 1949 novel I Capture the Castle until recently, when Jen W., a member of my book group, told the rest of us in the most strenuous terms that we must read it immediately. I quickly learned why it is capable of generating such […]

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July 08

Take My Advice…

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When an award-winning novelist gives you a book recommendation, you should take it. Fellow University Iowa alum and General Education Literature instructor — and honorary “lettered lady” — V. V. Ganeshananthan is my go-to source for teaching ideas as I plan my World Literature syllabi.  (Incidentally, she’s also the author of one of my favorite […]

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June 29

The Comps List of Life

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In my graduate program in English, there was this daunting hurdle called comps and this rather lovely associated artifact called the comps list. To be successfully “comped,” you were expected to know a hundred-year period of literature thoroughly and demonstrate that knowledge in an oral exam in front of a committee of your professors. The […]

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June 04

What Stacy is Reading Now: Girls I Know by Douglas Trevor

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It’s been a long time since I was so engrossed in a book that I read it until I fell asleep…and then got up and read with PJs and coffee as soon as I woke up. Girls I Know was one of those books.  I started it on a rainy Memorial Day weekend (while the […]

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