Every now and again, people knock you out with their generosity. Such is the case with Thor Magnus and Nordic Custom Builders of Greenwich, Connecticut. About a year ago, ReadThis sponsored a large book drive for the Leadership Institute, a public high school in the Bronx, with absolutely no library. As the administrators put it: [...]
John LeCarre, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. If this were not a thriller–and belonged to some other genre–it would be hailed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It also happens to be an extraordinary depiction of how grim and bleak post-war British life was. Harper Lee, To Kill a [...]
Colin Miner, on his blog Gutenberg Revisited, posted a piece today on Andrea Levy’s new novel, The Long Song, that basically convinces us that we need to get a copy immediately. You can read the full article here, buy the book here, or go to Levy’s website for more description. Her lyricism could float an [...]
Blogger Maude Newton had an interesting piece on Jamaica Kincaid today, a favorite writer and friend to young readers who pitched in on the ReadThis/The Center for Fiction effort to get books for NYC kids. Check out the longer piece and the clip on Newton’s blog, but here’s some of Kincaid’s tough talk on memoir: [...]
The current issue of the The Paris Review has an intriguing interview with John McPhee, writer on such diverse subjects as “the atomic bomb, the environmental movement, the U.S. Merchant Marine, Russian art, and fishing. Four books on geology. Three on transport. Two on sports. One book entirely about oranges.” The issue is well worth buying, [...]
ReadThis members finished buying all 35 copies of Hamlet this weekend for the class at the Women’s Academy of Excellence in the Bronx. Thank you for helping this public high school on its way to attaining its wishlist. If you are interested in buying books for this or other schools, please see our Donate page.
With Mother’s Day fast approaching, ReadThis asked Ada Calhoun, parenting expert and author of the new Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids, to give us her list of favorite mothers in literature. Let us know who is on your list. 1. HOUSEKEEPING (1980) by Marilynne Robinson This is one of my all-time favorite [...]
James Michener on his 1971 book of reporting, Kent State, What Happened and Why “When those National Guardsmen fired on those students in the spring of 1970, killing four of them and wounding nine, I felt compelled to understand what happened. I think we all saw that this was a kind of watershed point, that [...]
Today marks the day in 1937 that Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Gone With the Wind. For nine years, Mitchell, a journalist in Atlanta, Georgia, had secretly struggled to pen the epic, stashing pages in closets, drawers, and bookshelves. One evening, a friend introduced her to publisher Harlold Latham of Macmillan. He said [...]
ReadThis occasionally provides writer visits to hospitals, workplaces or homeless shelters that request a particular boost to promote reading. If you are an author, willing to volunteer to visit a location locally, please let us know. You can email us at info@readthisbook.us and we will keep your information on record for when a match request [...]
