Susan Salter Reynolds is a book critic and writer who lives in Los Angeles and Vermont. She has three children: Sam, Ellie, and Mia.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Discoveries: Denis Johnson, Andrei Makine, & Sue Coe
On 'Train Dreams,' 'The Life of an Unknown Man,' and 'Cruel'...
Discoveries: Franzen, Beachy-Quick, & Baldwin
On 'Farther Away,' 'Wonderful Investigations,' and 'Paris, I love you...'...
To Read, Perchance to Dream
THIS IS A BOOK about reading. It offers the kinds of insights into the act that most of us never stop ...
The Morning After
OF COURSE THE TITLE is irresistible. In a sea of books about the glories of Paris, and why can’t ...
Like Settled Dust
THERE'S SO MUCH RAW pain in these gorgeous essays that one understands why many writers rarely leave the house, much less ...
Discoveries: Tom Bissell, April Bernard, James Franco, John Green, Sarah Manguso
On 'Magic Hours,' 'Miss Fuller,' 'The Dangerous Book Four Boys,' 'The Fault of Our Stars,' and 'The Guardians.'...
Invisibility Act
nbsp; "Magic Hour: The brief periods of dawn and dusk that allow enough time for shooting, but also create some striking ...
Postscript
THIS IS THE BEST KIND of historical fiction — the kind that dives right in. With very little explanation or introduction, the ...
Unfamous
IT IS NOT HARD TO FEEL motherly toward James Franco (thirty years ago I might have sung a different tune). He ...
Only the Good
IF ONLY I COULD STOP crying long enough to write about this damn book. (Since John Green is a "YA," or ...
Portrait of a Friendship
WHAT CAN A WRITER DO? In 2008, Sarah Manguso's friend Harris jumped in front of a train pulling in to a ...
Discoveries: Gail Jones
With her first few brushstrokes, Jones sets these lives in motion, towards each other...
Discoveries: Krys Lee
Most have been forced to piece together a life between Korea and America....
Discoveries: Lars Iyer
Our heroes: unlikely philosophers, whining their way through the American South...
Discoveries: Pamela Druckerman
Okay! I get it! The French are better than us in every way!...
Discoveries: Friedrich Delius
She tries to make sense of the war and its reasons, and cannot....
Discoveries: Tupelo Hassman
Girlchild is told in many voices: Rory’s diary entries, social worker notes, letters, arrest records,...
Discoveries: Trea Martyn
IMAGINE A TIME WHEN, to win a woman's love, the ardent suitor had to create a garden more beautiful, more sensual, ...
Discoveries: Christian McEwen
HERE IS YOUR CHANCE: a new year, a new opportunity to slow down, stop your crazy multitasking, pay attention to the ...
Discoveries: Clyde Phillip Wachsberger
IT IS GOOD, MIDWINTER, to read about gardens - it keeps the imagination green and ready for spring. Serious gardeners cozy up ...
Discoveries: John Jeremiah Sullivan
JUST WHEN YOU THINK AMERICA is going down the tubes, you read John Sullivan's essays (or David Foster Wallace's, or Rebecca ...
Discoveries: Jane Smiley
THERE'S NOTHING LIKE READING writers on writers, and this Penguin series, first published at the turn of this century, contains some ...
Discoveries: Edna O'Brien
JAMES JOYCE, POOR JOIST, a funnominal man, supporting a gay house in a slum of despond." Edna O'Brien lays it on ...
Discoveries: Nathaniel Philbrick
The greed that reached full bloom here in our lifetimes was still a glimmer in Daddy's eye....
Discoveries: Robert Vivian
THESE ESSAYS CONTAIN SOME OF THE FINEST writing I have ever read. We readers are big mammals. We lumber through life ...
Discoveries: Christopher Merrill
CHRISTOPHER MERRILL HAS ALWAYS believed in quests. Over many years and many books he has traveled out, confronting fear, admiring the ...
Three Novels
By Nightfall, like The Hours, is chock full of literary reference, especially Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), not Virginia Woolf....
Discoveries: Lily Tuck
YOU SUSPECT IT'S TRUE: what we remember at life's end are the vacations, the concerts, the dinners with friends. In one ...
Discoveries: Michael Cunningham
COMBINE FOR A MOMENT the descriptive power of a James Salter novel (oh, those beautiful things!) with the dialogue of a ...
Discoveries: Maile Meloy
MAILE MELOY SAYS IT'S FOR AGES ten and up, and I think that includes 52. This delightful secret garden of a ...
Romero, Blew, Aciman, Hughes
Some doors opened, were squeezed through, then slammed shut, trapping women like Blew in lives filled with unprecedented challenges....
Discoveries: Ben Loory
STRANGE, GORGEOUS FABLES - the reader isn't sure if she has dreamed them or read them. A homesick octopus with a collection ...
Discoveries: Mary Jane Nealon
The book is shot through with this kind of awareness and sensitivity, and examples of healing presence....
Discoveries: Frances Moore Lappé
When Lappé speaks, we listen....
Discoveries: Henri Cole
ldquo;IT'S GOOD FOR THE EGO,” Cole writes in the poem “Hens,” “when I call and they ...
Discoveries: Alexandra Fuller
IN ALEXANDRA FULLER'S CLASSIC MEMOIR Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, the author used all her formidable humor, ...
Discoveries: Beryl Bainbridge
ALL OF BERYL BAINBRIDGE'S characters are refugees from the past. They arrive on the pages of her books either shot from ...
Discoveries: Dan Fante
I HAVE LEAD AN INTENSE LIFE,” Dan Fante writes in his author’s note. “For the sake of brevity I have ...
