individual readers send in a recommendation
During the 2021 Charleston Literary Festival, Kameelah Martin, Dean of the Graduate School at College of Charleston, interviewed Tiya Miles, whose book All That She Carried : The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family’s Keepsake won the National Book Award for non-fiction in 2021. Yes, this book is non-fiction! Miles is a Professor of History at Harvard University, and she researched her own family
My Saint Simons friend Becky, who publishes an Instagram Blog entitled beckyonbooks, has a few new recommendations. The following are three books and her comments on why she liked them: The Maid, by Nita Prose A maid in a hotel discovers a body in a room she goes in to clean Becky says: There is an interesting cast of character and suspects; the writing is
The Paris Bookseller, Kerri Maher Historical fiction at its most authentic!! The Paris Bookseller is about real-life American Sylvia Beach, who opened a bookstore in Paris in 1919. The name of the bookstore was Shakespeare and Company, and it soon became a mecca for expatriate writers from America. (Readers will remember The Paris Wife, a story about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley, who
If you read a lot in bed, either print material or on a tablet, you may have touble with your neck. I do because the book isn’t lined up with your eyes at the right angle so you tend to strain your neck. One of the many newsletters I receive had a link to an Interesting advertisement. Take a look at a few of the
For a long while now, I have stopped trying to defend the South: the place of my birth, the place my ancesters settled shortly after the United States became a country and the place I have lived my entire life. Of course I knew that the South committed treason by seceding from the nation. I realized there was no legitimate ‘lost cause.’ I was not
From Madeleine Kaye– Frances: Your post inspired me to search reviews of “The Sentence”, and both the NY Times and the Washington Post gave it such raves that I’m suggesting it for our local book club. It also reminded me of one of the most intriguing “pandemic” books I’ve read in years: “The Dog Stars” by Peter Heller. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune gives this description: In
If you are intereseted in banned books as they pertain to the prison population, read the following eye-opening article contributed by blog member Marty Drake. https://themarysue.com/prisons-banned-book-week
This comment is from a friend who has an Instagram blog entitled beckyonbooks. Check her out because she combines reading with phtography. It’s a nice combination of the finer things in life!! I think we all look for lighter books at times and still we want some substance. I have enjoyed several of Elizabeth Berg’s books which seem to fit the criteria and Fanny Flagg’s
A brief history of bookstores in the United States While bookselling was certainly happening in the colonies as early as 1640, it was not until after the War of 1812 when American booksellers began to print and sell books in the United States. Interestingly, copyrights were not necessary, so the works of English literature were available for a time at little cost to a growing
After I posted an entry about the history of ‘summer reading’, a friend suggested that I ask blog readers to share the names of some of the books they especially enjoyed this summer. All it took was an e-mail to Sandcastle Book Club members and my ‘You’ve Got Mail’ light lit up!! Thanks to all who shared. Below are their responses in their own words–
