Rebecca Reads

When, in 1918, a clerk erroneously ordered twelve times the number of children’s books, Western Publishing Company may have faced ruin. Instead, the company persuaded Woolworth’s department stores to sell it, a practice unusual since children’s books were normally only sold during the holiday season.
Years later, in the 1930s, one publishing novice was inspired when [...]

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed reading The Book that Changed My Life, edited by Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannesson.
The Book that Changed My Life is a collection of essays by writers, and since I don’t often read modern fiction, I didn’t expect to recognize many of the authors highlighted, much less did I [...]

Bookshelf Meme
Eva at A Striped Armchair created a fun meme about the books on our bookshelves.

I’m finishing my review of Vladimir Nabokov’s short stories, which I loved reading. I hope to have it done by tomorrow.
But I feel I can’t write a post about Nabokov (even his short stories) without mentioning another work by this author that I probably don’t even need to name.

I saw How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster on the “New Nonfiction” shelf at the library. I thought I’d take a glance through it when I got home, but I certainly had no intention of reading it: I have a lot of books either in progress or on my bedside table, [...]

I love lists. Lately, I’ve been making lists of my books to read. Weekly Geeks a number of weeks ago was to update something: that tells you something that it’s taken me this long to get my lists updated.
My husband says I’ve been working on reading lists more than I’ve been reading lately. But that’s [...]

I know I’m insane to think about another challenge when I’m already feeling overwhelmed. But I love the concept and the reading list for the Martel-Harper Challenge.

A few months ago, I read a version of Aesop’s Fables that I found online at Project Gutenberg, written and published in the early 1900s. I thought I’d read Aesop’s Fables.
I was interested, then, to read in chapter two (“Ingenuity and Authority”) of Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter [...]

I wrote the other day how I visited the library and got a number of novels.

Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Possession by A.S. Byatt
Atonement by Ian McEwan

I am very interested in reading all of them. I’ve only heard great things about them. I [...]

In his first chapter (“Speak, Child”) of Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, Seth Lerer discusses the “infancy” of children’s literature. Such a study requires a review of children’s education, as that is the basis for children’s literature. Lerer discusses the classics (the “really old classics,” as I’ve dubbed them on [...]