Author Archives: thaliabooks
Anthony Bourdain Saved my Thanksgiving
As Thanksgiving approaches my mind tends to wander to the topic of food. I think about mashed potatoes frequently. My mother’s stuffing is a close second. I think about people sitting down for the Thanksgiving meal and the people who … Continue reading
Viva la Beatles!
“Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles” opened in Austin last night at the Long Center. The show transports its audience back in time—to a time some of them still remember—the 1960s. Two large screens buttress the stage. A mimic of … Continue reading
Summer Reading List
When I walked into a used bookstore located near Wilmington beach, I asked the helpful cashier to point me towards “light reading.” The overenthusiastic staff member tried to press Wharton and Twain on me. I explained that I’m a literature … Continue reading
Louder than a Bomb
You watch “Louder than a Bomb” and you want to change the world. You are suddenly in awe of the talents you’ve been given, and you wonder if you are using them all, if you are working hard enough, if … Continue reading
Common Readers and The Uncommon Reader
How do you choose only five books that every American should read? At least 100 would be a beginning, but five! On Facebook occasionally a list gets passed around of the books everyone should have read and people highlight how … Continue reading
Beloved: Remembering Lost Things
I put off reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved for a long time, mostly because I had been horrified by her novel Song of Solomon when I was fourteen (not a book geared for teenagers: among other terrors, it includes a woman … Continue reading
The Moviegoer, Quintessentially American
Harold Bloom calls The Moviegoer “a permanent American book,” placing the novel in the tradition of Mark Twain. He describes the protagonist Binx Bolling as “a kind of grown-up, ruefully respectable New Orleans version of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn”—leave it to … Continue reading
Five Books Every American Should Read: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Number Two
Last year, one hundred years after his death, the Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 was published. Its author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) banned its publication until this time, and the project has … Continue reading
A Purgatorial Venture: Moby Dick
Recently a history professor at a conservative university asked if I would write five blogs for him on the five books every American should read; I’ve decided to post each one here as well. If there is one book that … Continue reading
Solzhenitsyn’s Final Word: Hope
If Americans think of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, they think of him as a negative person–full of doom and gloom, cursing the future. Russians often view him as a political hero, who stood up to the Communist regime. However, if he only … Continue reading
