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He Got Biden to Open Up About His Stutter, Then Wrote About His Own

John Hendrickson's memoir “Life on Delay” recounts his experience with this poorly understood neurological disorder, tracing an arc from frustration and isolation to acceptance and community.

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LIFE ON DELAY: Making Peace With a Stutter , by John Hendrickson

“‘R’s’ are hard,” John Hendrickson writes in his new memoir, “Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter,” committing to paper a string of words that would have caused him trouble had he tried to say them out loud.

In November 2019, Hendrickson, an editor at The Atlantic, published an article about then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, who talked frequently about “beating” his childhood stutter — a bit of hyperbole that the article finally laid to rest . Biden insisted on his redemptive narrative, even though Hendrickson, who has stuttered since he was 4, could tell when Biden repeated (“I-I-I-I-I”) or blocked (“…”) on certain sounds.

The article went viral, putting Hendrickson in the position of being invited to go on television — a “nightmare,” he said on MSNBC at the time, though it did lead to a flood of letters from fellow stutterers, a number of whom he interviewed for this book. “Life on Delay” traces an arc from frustration and isolation to acceptance and community, recounting a lifetime of bullying and well-meaning but ineffectual interventions and what Hendrickson calls “hundreds of awful first impressions.” When he depicts scenes from his childhood it’s often in a real-time present tense, putting us in the room with the boy he was, more than two decades before.

Hendrickson also interviews people: experts, therapists, stutterers, his own parents. He calls up his kindergarten teacher, his childhood best friend and the actress Emily Blunt . He reaches out to others who have published personal accounts of stuttering, including The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller and Katharine Preston, the author of a memoir titled “Out With It.” We learn that it’s only been since the turn of the millennium or so that stuttering has been understood as a neurological disorder; that for 75 percent of children who stutter, “the issue won’t follow them to adulthood”; that there’s still disagreement over whether “disfluency” is a matter of language or motor control, because “the research is still a bit of a mess.”

All of this is seamlessly recounted, threading together science and emotion, ideas and experience. Recalling the sweet relief offered by lunchtime dance parties in his second-grade classroom leads Hendrickson into a discussion of how stutterers find that moving another body part can help get a word out. (These are secondary behaviors, and he calls them “exhausting.”) A fifth-grade memory of wanting to become a baseball player, a sportswriter or an actor (in that order) segues into a few paragraphs about how stutterers have often found fluency in dramatic performance, because recitation and spontaneous conversation use different parts of the brain.

Even if Hendrickson doesn’t explicitly say so, getting these narrative transitions right is evidently crucial to him; connecting his thoughts is a way of connecting with us, drawing us in, capturing our attention and keeping it there. In his non-writing life, he is used to the opposite, to people’s escalating impatience. He movingly describes not only his own experience of trying to speak to others but also his constant awareness of their experience of him , often unwittingly revealed as they “subtly wince” or offer “polite but loaded” lines like “Take your time.”

Time is both a preoccupation and a theme, which the title of the book makes clear. As the poet and performer JJJJJerome Ellis tells him, “The way I speak often leads to an antagonistic relationship with time.” For parents of children who stutter, time looms menacingly large, too; the brain loses its plasticity with each passing year, making fluency increasingly ever harder to attain.

And then there is the time it takes to convert a thought into sounds and subsequently voice them — a matter of tens of milliseconds, making the extra seconds of a stutter feel, to both speaker and listener, excruciatingly long. (“In my weakest moments,” Hendrickson confesses, “I want someone else’s block to be over, just like I want mine to be over.”) Hendrickson, who cycled through various media companies and layoffs before landing at The Atlantic, knew that a job interview was going to be a non-starter when the harried editor greeted him by saying, “Well, I don’t have much time …”

Not coincidentally, Hendrickson has cultivated an undeniable gift for concise metaphors, distilling potentially long-winded explanations into memorable images, briskly delivered. Blocking, he writes, “is like trying to push two positively charged magnets together.” Describing how his jaw locks when he tries to say the “j” in “John” while introducing himself, he half-jokingly wonders why his parents didn’t name him Michael: “The second syllable plops out, like a raindrop on a creek.”

As for those parents, they were loving and had the best of intentions, but Hendrickson believes they protected him too much in some ways — ordering for him at restaurants; driving him to school instead of letting him ride the bus — while also doing too little to protect him from his older brother, who teased and bullied him relentlessly. As Catholics, he explains, the family was inculcated in “traditions of guilt, shame and secrecy.”

Toward the end of the book, he eventually has a frank conversation with his parents; his brother moves from defensiveness to contrition, too. The redemptive arc to his family’s story is so neatly drawn that it called to mind the old silver-bullet approach to stuttering, one that viewed disfluency “as something to be fixed, solved, cured.”

But part of what Hendrickson writes about so beautifully is the movement to destigmatize the condition; instead of trying to run away from it, some stutterers accept it as a part of who they are. He recounts how one of his correspondents, a 32-year-old man named Hunter Martinez, was dying of late-stage colon cancer when he resolved not to “hold back as much.” Martinez said he could “wallow in self-pity” and isolation, “or I can have a fulfilled life, where you just have to struggle with it sometimes.”

LIFE ON DELAY: Making Peace With a Stutter | By John Hendrickson | 255 pp. | Alfred A. Knopf | $29

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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‘Life On Delay’ Review: A Touching Ode to Self-Acceptance

Words are the way a person communicates with the world. But what if words aren’t available? What if the language isn’t there, or what if the words are floating just out of reach?

In his poignant memoir, “Life On Delay,” John Hendrickson invites the reader to understand his own relationship with words — the ones he says and the ones he doesn’t. A lifelong stutterer, Hendrickson uses “Life On Delay” to communicate the immense impact of spoken word.

Hendrickson harnesses words every day as a staff writer at The Atlantic. After publishing a 2019 article discussing Joe Biden’s stutter , he was offered the chance to speak on MSNBC. He took it.

“You’d like to think that when these moments arise you stride toward them – chin up, chest out, triumphant horns blaring somewhere in the background,” Henderson writes of the experience. “Right now I’m just scared.”

He had spent his whole life avoiding public speaking and was suddenly thrust into the limelight. Yet, he chose to be interviewed not just this once, but multiple times on national television. While his story may initially draw readers due to its Biden connection, Hendrickson’s tale is strong enough to stand on its own.

In addition to the professional opportunities provided by the article’s success, Hendrickson’s article also sparked an outpouring of letters from fellow people who stutter. Hendrickson writes that for the first time in his life, he felt like a part of a community. As a result of the story’s popularity, Hendrickson embarked on a voyage through his own past, slowly piecing together his own relationship with stuttering from his diagnosis as a kindergartner up to the present day. In his memoir, Hendrickson talks to old teachers, girlfriends, college buddies, and bosses – those who had seen his stuttering first hand. Most importantly, he dives into his relationships with his parents and older brother; his tumultuous relationship with his family threads throughout the novel, haunting him long after both he and his brother leave the confines of their home.

As Hendrickson interviews those from his past, he weaves his personal experiences with current research on stuttering as well as the experiences of both private and public figures who struggle with stuttering. At times the patchwork of lives throughout the work felt random, cutting from one story to the next. But in other moments, the stories bled into each other, reminding the reader of the commonality of the human experience and encouraging greater compassion for all. His journalistic tendencies shine through as he reports on what others have learned.

This memoir revolves around others' and society’s responses to those that have a stutter. Hendrickson describes the painful, physical reactions that others have – pulling their head back, looking away, wincing — when watching him stutter:

“It’s primal, this reaction: another body literally retreating from you, the problem,” he writes.

But this is not just a book about stuttering. Even though the novel focuses on stuttering, the book highlights the common challenge of struggling to communicate with those around you. Whether it’s struggling to communicate in a new language or suffering from a disease that impedes speech, readers of many communities can relate to Hendrickson’s experiences. And at the end of the day, Hendrickson can find peace with his past and his stutter, providing inspiration for readers to find peace with their own challenges, too.

—Staff writer Sophia N. Downs can be reached at [email protected] .

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LIFE ON DELAY

Making peace with a stutter.

by John Hendrickson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 17, 2023

This appealing and perceptive memoir takes an unsentimental look at life with a speech disorder.

A senior editor at the Atlantic reflects on how his lifelong stutter has shaped his life and relationships.

Hendrickson began having difficulties with his speech in kindergarten, and his teacher suggested that his parents have him evaluated by a speech pathologist. Soon he began to visit the dreaded “little room,” the school therapist’s office, while he and his parents hoped that his stutter would go away naturally, as some do, but “it got worse.” Hendrickson poignantly chronicles his efforts to navigate adolescence and high school with a fear of speaking, discovering along the way that alcohol “greatly diminish[ed]” his stutter. He also writes about suffering from a depressive episode in his late teens. “Depression doesn’t care if you acknowledge its existence,” he writes. “It’s quiet. It’s patient….I’ve learned to manage it, but I still don’t know if I’ll fully return to that predepression point.” In the midsection of the narrative, the author writes about his college years and the beginning of his career as a journalist, culminating in his 2019 interview with Joe Biden, “the most famous living stutterer.” Hendrickson also describes the beginning of his relationship with his wife, Liz, who has dystonia, a neuromuscular disorder. As the author notes, the ways in which their bodies “betray” them became a point of commonality. Hendrickson’s approach to his subject is both personal and investigative, as he recounts his interviews with his family, his former teachers and therapists, fellow stutterers, and doctors who study speech disorder. One of the most interesting interview subjects is Dr. Courtney Byrd, the director of the country’s “preeminent stuttering research center,” whose “controversial” take is that “a lot of the stigma that’s related to stuttering begins in the office of the speech-language pathologist.” The dramatic tension in the book is mainly derived from Hendrickson’s fraught relationship with his brother, who bullied the author as a child, mocking his stutter mercilessly.

Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2023

ISBN: 978-0-593-31913-0

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | HEALTH & FITNESS | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781668052273

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

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He was once ashamed of his stutter. Then he embraced it.

In ‘Life on Delay,’ John Hendrickson recalls how he overcame the resentment and fear that his disfluency caused

Every fall, I teach a graduate class about the practical matters of being a writer and sustaining a writing life. All incoming MFA students enroll, and I begin the first class with spoken self-introductions. This past fall, one student had an obvious stutter. He has not overcome it the way that President Biden, our university’s past president and my childhood handyman have. Instead, stuttering remains an integral part of this student’s spoken voice.

In “ Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter ,” John Hendrickson writes of a similar experience as a student on the first day of high school 20 years ago. “I try to steady my breathing,” he recounts. “I clench my fingers into tight fists. . . . I’m struggling to calculate the number of seconds each kid takes times the number of students left to go.” Did my student have the same agonizing response to this activity? The young Hendrickson stuttered his way through his introduction another seven times that day. In a later interview, the teacher recalled his own guilt, anxiety and doubt about the way he handled the situation.

What surprised me last semester wasn’t my student’s stutter but my lack of anxiety. Early in my career, I probably would have sought out university resources to help this student, just as faculty members do when students reveal learning disabilities. Admittedly, I might have pitied him, as he stammered in front of his peers. I’d like to think that, as writers, we value each individual voice in its cadences, pauses and gestures. My student took the time he needed to say what he wanted to say, but did I — or did other students — give him what Hendrickson calls “The Look”? The Look is “the moment the listener suddenly realizes something is wrong with you, that moment they subtly wince. . . . The judgement. The pity. . . . The Look never leaves you.”

When Hendrickson joined the staff at the Atlantic, he had spent almost three decades fielding The Look. “I know my stutter can feel like a waste of time — of yours, of mine — and that it has the power to embarrass both of us,” he writes. He employed avoidance, especially steering clear of talking about his stutter. Then, four months into his new job, he pitched the idea of writing about presidential candidate Joe Biden as a self-defined gaffe machine. He told the editor, “I could pick up on all the little things Biden was doing to keep his lingering stutter at bay — his blinks, his word substitutions, his head and hand movements.” Hendrickson procrastinated for two months before requesting an interview with Biden. As he continued to work on that article, he had trouble sleeping and eating. He started losing his hair. What he wrote in his notebook applied to himself as much as it did to Biden: “ Biden won’t really admit he still stutters. What does that mean?” Even as Hendrickson readied himself to appear on MSNBC after the article went viral, “a large part of me wanted to keep hiding.”

“Life on Delay” is the mold-breaking story of stuttering that Hendrickson was able to tell — and grow into — once he stopped hiding. In response to that Biden article, notes poured in, and he replied to all of them. He has “had conversations with stutterers from all over the world” in order “to know how other people deal with it.” He talks about his stutter with strangers, friends and family, including Matt, the brother who bullied him. This full-hearted memoir grapples with shame, resentment and fear as Hendrickson answers with courage and compassion one of the most meaningful questions in life: “How do you accept an aspect of yourself that you’re taught at such an early age to hate?”

While 2 percent of children stutter , according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, most outgrow this disfluency, often without intervention. Stuttering, which was renamed “childhood-onset fluency disorder” in the most recent “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , ” is more prevalent in men and those with a family history of disfluency. Hendrickson falls into these two categories, and his experiences also echo studies that indicate those who continue to stutter face anxiety, self-loathing and discrimination that affect their relationships and careers. In conversation with psychiatry professor Gerald Maguire, Hendrickson also recognizes connections between stuttering, obsessive tendencies and use of alcohol to improve fluency. While “Life on Delay” focuses on Hendrickson’s stammering life, this memoir astutely illuminates the complexity of disfluency more broadly.

One of the most thought-provoking sections draws from an interview with writer-musician JJJJJerome Ellis, who says: “A time limit assumes that all people have relatively equal access to time through their speech, which is not true. . . . I don’t actually know how long it will take me to say something until I have to say it.” It’s eye-opening for Hendrickson to see someone who “has reclaimed the power of his stutter,” right down to using multiple J’s in his first name. What might it mean to set aside notions of deficit and, instead, celebrate the range of human voices? In this context, stuttering is a disability not because of the speech impairment but because social norms haven’t adapted to it. What if we listened more patiently?

This powerful flipping of responsibility in disfluency is echoed by Austin Kleon, who is known for his guides to creativity. In describing his son Owen’s stutter to Hendrickson, Kleon chooses positive adjectives like “profound.” Hendrickson, who faced negative experiences growing up, understands that when a stutterer can acknowledge a lack of fluency and doesn’t have to hide or try to fit in, daily life improves. “Crucially,” Hendrickson writes, “Owen was taught to self-identify as a stutterer” under the care of Courtney Byrd, a professor who heads a top stuttering research center at the University of Texas at Austin. Byrd’s approach has resulted in a majority of her team’s patients reporting “a significantly lower degree of bullying, depression, and anxiety than those who learn only fluency-shaping techniques.”

By contrast, in college Hendrickson avoided oral assignments, with encouragement from his professors, which nearly cost him his degree. He even admits, “I’ve never had the courage to leave an outgoing message on my iPhone.” Tackling a stutter without shame or reticence, as Owen Kleon does, represents an appealing alternative in which communication is a shared responsibility.

Hendrickson’s difficult relationship with his brother has long left them at odds. In the last chapter of “Life on Delay,” Hendrickson seems to approach a reconciliation. His brother, now the father of two sons, wants his children to have a stronger relationship. He notes that his sons are separated by the same number of years as he and John are. He acknowledges his past cruel behavior toward his brother, and he’s ashamed. He apologizes for making John’s childhood worse. “I just, that’s just — something about a child being in pain fills my eyes up as a parent now,” he says.

Hendrickson has had a hard time forgiving the torment his brother inflicted on him growing up. But he responds with an empathy that is his — and the book’s — trademark. He tells Matt that he himself has come a long way in understanding and accepting himself. “I have to open my mind and my heart … to believing other people are capable of change,” he says. “It would be … hypocritical of me, it would be foolish of me, ignorant of me … to think that I’m capable of change … and another person … isn’t, you know?”

“Life on Delay” recasts stuttering and, in doing so, challenges long-standing attitudes toward disability. By drawing deftly from personal experience, research, others’ stories and his wellspring of empathy, Hendrickson transforms the disorder he avoided claiming for decades into an invitation to all of us to demonstrate genuine humanity.

Anna Leahy is the author of “ Tumor ” and directs the MFA in creative writing program at Chapman University.

Life on Delay

Making Peace With a Stutter

By John Hendrickson

Knopf. 255 pp. $29

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Life On Delay

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He soon learned he wasn’t alone with his feelings: strangers who stutter began sending him their own personal stories, something that continues to this day. Now, in this reported memoir, Hendrickson takes us deep inside the mind and heart of a stutterer as he sets out to answer lingering questions about himself and his condition that he was often too afraid to ask.

Life on Delay is an indelible account of perseverance, a soulful narrative about not giving up, and a glimpse into the process of making peace with our past and present selves.

“A raw, intimate look at [Hendrickson's] life with a stutter. It’s a profoundly moving book that will reshape the way you think about people living with this condition.”—Esquire

“Life On Delay brims with empathy and honesty . . . It moved me in ways that I haven’t experienced before. It’s fantastic.”—Clint Smith, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller How the Word Is Passed

“I can’t remember the last time I read a book that made me want to both cry and cheer so much, often at the same time.”—Robert Kolker, best-selling author of Hidden Valley Road

From the 2024 Spring Magazine

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John Hendrickson on his new memoir 'Life on Delay'

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NPR's Scott Simon talks with writer John Hendrickson. His new memoir, "Life on Delay," details his struggle with stuttering.

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Book Review: ‘The Gotti Wars,’ by John Gleeson

John Gleeson’s “The Gotti Wars” is a memoir about what it took to jail America’s star gangster. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2022-04-29 20:03:55 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #john gleeson #memoir

Book Review: ‘Silverview,’ by John le Carré

“Silverview” features a young bookstore owner in an English seaside town, caught up in an investigation involving two cunning spymasters. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-10-11 09:00:03 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #bookstore

Book Review: ‘On the House,’ by John Boehner

“On the House” is an anecdote-rich memoir by the former speaker of the House that fails to give readers the whole picture. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2021-04-09 13:05:40 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #john boehner #give readers #memoir

Rep. John Lewis’s Life Story Continues in ‘Run: Book One’

'Run: Book One', a posthumous work by the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, is the continuation of his National Book Award-winning graphic memoir The March trilogy. The book will be published by Abrams ComicArts in August 2021. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-03-31 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #john lewis #march trilogy #abrams comicarts #graphic memoir

John Bolton's bad reviews don't stop him topping US book charts

The Room Where It Happened, due out later this month if attempts to block publication fail, has received stinging early notices but is already Amazon’s No 1John Bolton’s damning indictment of the Trump presidency is topping bestseller charts in the US a week before its release, despite withering... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-06-18 11:54:13 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #trump presidency #last-ditch attempt #family created #dangerous man #mary trump #ijeoma oluo #robin diangelo #top spots #bestseller charts

Book review: Skin in the Game - Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

REVIEW: Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the Richard Wagner of uncertainty. While the Ring Cycle of the German composer/librettist portrayed the struggle of the gods in a series of operas, the Incerto series of books by the Lebanese-American author is devoted to humans - specifically how we deal with... Continue reading at Stuff

[ Stuff | 2018-03-03 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #daily life

Book review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Turtles All the Way Down is best-selling author John Green's first novel since 2012's runaway success, The Fault in Our Stars. While that book tackled the issue of teens with cancer, this book centres on a protagonist suffering from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviour. Green,... Continue reading at Stuff

[ Stuff | 2017-11-04 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #john green #book review #runaway success #book centres #main character

The literary life of Michiko Kakutani: the book critic's best feuds and reviews

The New York Times writer is stepping down from her role, leaving behind a remarkable career characterized by razor-sharp reviews and intra-literary rowsMichiko Kakutani, the New York Times’ revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post on Thursday after 38 years,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2017-07-29 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #greek mythology

Lynne Truss: ‘A bad book review can kill you – look at the case of John Hawkesworth’

The tale of a hubristic Georgian book editor is an early example of trolling, and a lesson for us allThe case of the 18th-century man of letters John Hawkesworth is not often invoked, perhaps because no one has heard of him. Books of notable Georgians in England go straight from Hawke to Haydon.... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2017-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this |

Book review: 'An Improbable Life' by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown

A coming-of-age story by former Angels pitcher Abbott is at its best when describing his influence as a role model off the field.Imperfect Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #coming-of-age story #role model

Book review: 'Lives of the Novelists' by John Sutherland

These delightful biographies of 294 authors begin with John Bunyan in the 17th century and ends with Rana Dasgupta, born in 1971.My assignment: Read almost 300 literary biographies in more than 800 pages, all of English-language authors, beginning in the 17th century and ending in the present... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #reference book #17th century #rana dasgupta #present day

Books: The new Trump book, plus book reviews and news

For book lovers and politics fiends, 2018 has gotten off to a bang with the early publication of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff. Welcome to the new year! I’m Carolyn Kellogg with this week’s books newsletter. THE BIG STORY Excerpts from “Fire and Fury” that... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #books newsletter #trump book #book reviews #book lovers #michael wolff #carolyn kellogg

After a 10-year Hiatus, Englewood Review of Books Relaunches its Book Publishing Arm

The Englewood Review of Books (ERB), the online review publication started in 2008, has announced that it will restart its book publishing program, thanks in part to a grant from the Lily Endowment. “We wanted to think differently about how we are prepared to contribute to the larger work,” said... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-09-03 04:00:00 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book publishing

Book Club: Read ‘My Brilliant Friend’ With the Book Review

In August, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss “My Brilliant Friend,” the first book in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-07-31 09:04:25 UTC ] More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #book review #neapolitan quartet #elena ferrante #brilliant friend #book club

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