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Tag Archives: American

The Age of Innocence

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Author: Edith Wharton
First Published: 1920, in the Pictorial Review
The first chapter of the Age of Innocence is one of those magical first chapters that contains the entirety of the book within it. In fact, it holds a single sentence that contains the entire book:
He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a [...]

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In Cold Blood

Friday, June 19, 2009

Author: Truman Capote
First Published: 1965, in The New Yorker
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of Western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”
So begins, beautifully, Truman Capote’s meticulously-researched masterpiece about the brutal 1959 murder of the Clutter family in their home, and the pursuit and execution of their [...]

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The Boys of My Youth

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Author: Jo Ann Beard
First Published: 1997, by Little, Brown

This is one of those books that comes along once in a lifetime. It’s so special that as soon as I finished it, I immediately sent a copy to Elizabeth Quinlan, my reading compatriot and the daughter of the woman who brought this reading sickness upon me [...]

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