Always the sworn enemy of all that is popular, Book Notes feels obliged to give readers fair warning. The festive season is but three months away and publishers have a glittering mass of blockbusters targeted at your unfortunate Christmas stocking.
In travelling around the world on an Odysseyan mission to rescue the memory of his relatives who perished in the Holocaust, Daniel Mendelsohn manages not just to draw us into the experiences of one family, but of the Jewish people as a whole. By Ron Rosenbaum
Flame, an adorable black kitten, stumbles into Sadie's life and, despite her father's allergy to cats, the little girl decides to keep him hidden in her bedroom.
Have you ever thought that the world makes no sense? Fear not, because so does awardwinning playwright, novelist and all-round amiable genius Michael Frayn.
One of my missions in life is to encourage young people to keep journals. It helps them develop writing skills and to reflect on their experiences. That is why Tony Hickey enjoyed Dear Me so much.
Michael McCaughan looks at two sets of memoirs written from the front lines of global battlefields by witnesses who join the revolution with no agenda other than their passion and idealism
If you find the contenders for the 2006 Man Booker Prize unfamiliar, you are not alone. When the shortlist was announced, even Book Notes was alarmed that so few established writers had failed to make it to the final round.
The following is an extract from Colum McCann's latest novel, Zoli. A story of betrayal and redemption, it begins in Czechoslovakia in the early 1930s and traces the life of Zoli, a young Roma girl
More than a decade after his death, the work of Nobel laureate William Golding has become unlikely hot property in Hollywood. Book Notes rejoices at the news that The Spire, Golding's sublime allegorical novel about a demented dean and his obsessional quest to complete his church, is to be filmed later this year. Golding, best known for that favourite of schoolteachers the world over, The Lord of the Flies, was regarded by many as the foremost British novelist of the Twentieth Century.
Great-grandmother Gisella tells her grandson the story of the time in the Old Country when, ignoring her aunt's advice, she stared too long into the eyes of a fox and was herself turned her into a fox.