My husband and I love to read in public. Sometimes we sit in a park quietly reading our books, other times we read aloud. Once we read aloud a short, hilarious play by Brigid Brophy, The Waste Disposal Unit, which was published in an old anthology of plays that the public library has so far neglected to discard. Some of our reading-in-public dates are successful, others not. It was terribly windy today, but we bravely sat outside on a restaurant patio with our books. I sat at a table under an umbrella while my husband dashed in and got the drinks. I was reading a pretty good novel by Mrs. Oli ..read more

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single reader in possession of a bed, must be in want of a good book.– Anonymous ( NOT Jane Austen) I am a proponent of reading in bed.  Many are not. Some outlaw this practice.   One imagines the Moms for Liberty waving torches in front of houses where they have sussed out reading in bed. Some readers find it cozier to listen to whale sounds before bed. They say it sends them instantly to sleep. Others apply numerous creams and moisturizers to their faces and arms and legs and then don a sleeping mask. Again they fall into immediate ..read more

Illustration from George MacDonald’s Phantastes Have you ever wanted to walk through a mirror? Wondered what is on the other side? Wondered if it is a portal, like the antique mirror in George MacDonald’s remarkable Victorian fantasy novel, Phantastes? Do visit my new companion blog, The Daily Read, and check out my new post, “Is the Mirror a Portal?” Remember, my main site is still here at Thornfield Hall ..read more

There you are, on the bus, head in a book, headed home. You even have bedhead.   The woman next to you told you this.  Having done her hairdo duty, she asks, “Is your book good?” Am I Holden Caulfield?  Is she Ackley?  Do I dare say, “This sentence is terrific”?   Maureen Howard (1930-2022) Now it’s not always like that.  Many passengers are readers, or at least sympathetic to readers.  Sometimes they read a library book.  Sometimes they read on their phone.  I am, at present, reading a Penguin of Maureen Howard’s autobiographical novel, Bridg ..read more

I have a lovely Folio Society copy of Henry James’s The Ambassadors to give away. It is almost too nice to handle: I found I preferred a Penguin paperback. And I don’t want to sell it to the local bookstore for $5 and retirm and find it in a glass case with the price tag $70. No, I’d rather give it away. Anyone in the U.S. or Canada is eligible, with one caveat: I have to know you at least slightly. This means you must have commented here once and a while over the years. Or perhaps I have traded books back and forth with you If you’re interested in the book, email me at mirabiledictu.org@g ..read more

After a few false starts, The Daily Write, my new blog, is up and running. Instead of writing about books, I’m writing informally about whatever comes into my head. I hope you’ll come by and read my first post, “Night Owls & Notebooks.” I call it The Daily Write, but the posts will appear less often. Thornfield Hall will continue to be my main site. Here is the url for The Daily Write: the-daily-write.blog ..read more

Everybody should read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which I enjoyed thoroughly on a fourth reading. It is not only a classic, but it is sui generis in American literature. In Twain’s smart, witty, suspenseful masterpiece, Huck and Jim, a comic duo on the run, try to escape trauma as they raft down the Mississippi River.  Jim, a runaway slave, took off when he learned that he was to be sold for $800 and separated from his wife and child. And Huck, too, is a runaway who has escaped from his drunken, abusive father.  Their experiences are in some ways parallel. Jim looks after Hu ..read more

I first read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in tenth grade, with sighs and much boredom.  I disliked American literature and anyway as a child had read Twain. I was an Anglophile devoted to Jane Austen,  Lynne Reid Banks, John Fowles,  Doris Lessing, and  D. H. Lawrence.  “Oh, God, this is in dialect,” I whispered. “And there is rafting,” my friend said. We were not athletic. So many classics are really intended for mature adults. We did not appreciate the brilliant rhetorical devices in Twain’s sentences at that difficult age. Check out the comic repetition of th ..read more

 Before online shopping, there was a plethora of subscription book clubs.   There were The Book of the Month, The Literary Guild, The Classics Book Club, and The Quality Paperback Book Club.  A pamphlet arrived each month,  and if you did not want the main selection, you checked the NO box and chose one of the alternatives.  The Quality Paperback Book club was our favorite.  The books really were of high quality. and there  were fabulous selections:  Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, an omnibus edition of Anna Kavan, an  omnibus of Christoph ..read more

First, the Eclipse Drama. My husband took Monday off to see the eclipse.  “It won’t be a total eclipse. You have to drive to Buffalo for that.” “I love Buffalo!”  Buffalo is a much hipper city than you’d think.  I like the dim light, the ocean-like waves of Lake Erie, Talking Leaf Books, Delaware Park, the art museum, and the Peace Bridge. (Niagara Falls is on the other side of the Peace Bridge.)  But it’s a long way from here. My husband laughed.  “The motel rooms have been booked for years.” Because, you know, there are a lot of eclipse fans. I have to say, I loved ..read more