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One of the keys to successful writing is grabbing the reader’s attention right off the bat. JenJen Reviews pays homage to this truism with her feature, First Lines Friday, at https://jenjenreviews.wordpress.com/. Each week she gives the opening lines of a book to see if it gets your attention. In today’s…

There must be thousands of children’s stories I’ve never read in the many years since I outgrew that genre. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane made me realize that I can still learn something from them. Edward, a three-foot tall china rabbit, belongs to a girl named Abilene. Dandyish, vain…

Most people read novels for entertainment. It’s remarkable, though, how much you can learn from them. For example, I couldn’t speak Japanese until I read James Clavell’s Shogun. By the time I finished it, I was capable of making short, polite conversation. I knew that Battle Creek, Michigan, was famous…

How does America look through the eyes of those who didn’t grow up in it? To the immigrants of Imbolo Mbue’s first novel, it’s the Biblical land God promised the Israelites, flowing with milk and honey. Though poor and struggling, Jende and Neni Jonga are thrilled to live in a…

When I began work on Weapons of Remorse in September 2016, I knew very little about publishing. At that time, my only goal was to get the novel down on paper – literally. Ideas were burning in my head, but I had only a yellow steno pad on which to…

What could feel more homey to a book lover than a book about a library – especially one set in occupied Paris during World War II? Janet Skeslien Charles has produced a gem in this novel based on the true story of the American Library in Paris. It is a tribute…

I don’t keep up with science fiction anymore, so I don’t know what the genre is like today. I do own about a dozen novels that are now considered sci-fi classics. Today I’d like to recommend two that share a similar theme. My all-time favorite is Solaris (1961) by Stanislaw…

Today I’d like to talk about one of my favorite authors. Anne Tyler lives in Baltimore, Maryland and has been writing for more than sixty years. Yet, I had never heard of her until the day I stumbled across a list of Pulitzer Prize winners. One of them was her…