OLM Favorites: Aid in the Labyrinth
/Randall Jarrell was suspicious of attempts to turn criticism into a science: he wrote as a reader, for other readers, with the work itself foremost in his mind.
Read MoreOLM Favorites: The Cute One Redux
/A sprawling new biography looks at both the quotidian day to day life and the pivotal music of the "cute" Beatle, Paul McCartney.
Read MoreOLM Favorites: The Madwoman and the Critic
/On Kate Zambreno’s Heroines and the crime of dismissive criticism in both Bookforum and The LA Review of Books.
Read MoreOLM Favorites: Learning How To Read-William Goldman's The Temple of Gold
/In Stephen Akey's personal essay, the sex and squalor of William Goldman's The Temple of Gold appeals to the thirteen-year-old he was when he first encountered it - and prompts an adult reassessment.
Read MoreOLM Favorites: This Drifty State of Being
/Two Idiots: Dostoevsky's classic and the new novel by Elif Batuman. What, if anything, do they have in common, and what do their differences say about each author's attitude toward fiction?
Read MoreOLM Favorites: Desperately Seeking Solzhenitsyn
/Every correspondent in Moscow wanted to be the first to find Solzhenitsyn after he won the Nobel Prize in 1970. Michael Johnson had that honor - but the great Russian writer wasn’t altogether pleased so see him.
Read MoreOLM Favorites: Prayers for the Stolen
/The plight of young girls in slavery-blighted Mexico is the crux of a harrowing novel by Jennifer Clement.
Read MoreBook Review: The Fate of Rome
/To the long list of potential explanations for the fall of Rome, a gripping new book adds one more: climate change.
Read MoreNo Trace of Lipstick
/An outstanding new biography argues convincingly that Olivia Manning is one of the most undervalued woman novelists of the 20th century. But was Manning a “woman novelist”? She thought not.
Read MoreIn Paperback: Beyond the Red
/The relationship between an alien queen and a renegade warrior forms the heart of Jae's epic SFF novel set on the desert planet Safara in "Beyond the Red," now in paperback.
Read MoreBook Review: Giannozzo Manetti
/New in the I Tatti series: a tract in praise of Christianity (at the expense of Jews and ancient pagans) by a towering figure of the early Renaissance.
Read MoreBook Review: The First Domestication
/The ancient partnership between humans and canines is the subject of a thorough new volume of research
Read MoreBook Review: Spineless
/A fascinating new book looks at the unendingly odd jellyfish - and some of the unexpected roles it plays in the 21st century world.
Read MoreBook Review: The Friendly Orange Glow
/A tremendously involving narrative history of a forgotten chapter in Internet history
Read MoreBook Review: The Dawn Watch
/A fantastic new biography of Joseph Conrad follows him around in his travels and delves into the heart of his many books.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's CD of the Week - Cecilia and Sol
/The present album brings together the super-mezzo Cecilia Bartoli and cellist Sol Gabetta. It is as good as it gets, until you realize that you can get too much of a good thing.
Read MoreMoments of Being: Virginia Woolf's Short Fiction
/Woolf’s short fiction is under-appreciated, but in its outpourings of place and feeling we find the style and rhythm that also created her great experimental novels.
Read MoreBook Review: The Big Book of the Continental Op
/All of Dashiell Hammett's stories and novels featuring the Continental Op, collected in one volume for the first time.
Read MoreNorman Lebrecht's Album of the Week - Late Schubert Sonatas
/Some records grab you by the ears, others take longer to impress. It is in no sense to Krystian Zimerman’s discredit that his first attempt at late Schubert took three spins on my deck before I grasped the originality of his interpretation.
Read MoreBook Review: Cartoon County
/In "Cartoon County," Vanity Fair editor Cullen Murphy recounts his famous cartoonist father's adventures during the heyday of the American pop art industry.
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