Writing About Reading

Writing About Reading

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The infinite lives of Duncan Idaho
The incredible Dune series gets much wilder, and much funnier, after the first book. And it's all about Duncan Idaho.
 • Daniel Roberts
Reading, fast and slow
On slowing down my reading. Plus: Discovering audiobooks from the library. Also: Where to find book recs. And: My favorite reads of 2020.
 • Daniel Roberts
"Where do you hear about books?"
I get asked this a lot. Here's my ultimate recommendation guide. Plus: my favorite reads of 2023.
 • Daniel Roberts
"Oh, my friend, my friend!"
It's extremely hard to write about dogs in fiction without it coming off as gimmicky or sappy. Sigrid Nunez pulls it off beautifully with "The Friend."
 • Daniel Roberts
Fear and loathing in 2020
Amid the insanity of the 2020 presidential campaign, it's worth revisiting Hunter S. Thompson's book on the 1972 presidential campaign.
 • Daniel Roberts
Listening to your reading
A tribute to audiobooks—and to consuming books while hiking, running, doing dishes, folding laundry, and even while showering—from someone who had never…
 • Daniel Roberts
Arrange your face
How memory, metonymy, and repetition make Thomas Cromwell real in Hilary Mantel’s incredible Wolf Hall trilogy.
 • Daniel Roberts
"Humming wires and buzzing switchboards"
Tom McCarthy's "C" is a postmodernist picaresque that travels from England to Germany to France to Egypt, told in the language of machines.
 • Daniel Roberts
Basic
Sally Rooney was hailed as the voice of her generation—then came the backlash. Why do writers dismiss other writers for being commercially successful?
 • Daniel Roberts
"That crisp crack of the bat"
Revisiting four excellent baseball novels (one brand new, three very old) that aren’t really about what happens on the field.
 • Daniel Roberts
Termite art
Teddy Wayne's "Apartment" went a little bit overlooked by the literary world. It reads like a tight play about male envy and self-doubt.
 • Daniel Roberts
Meet the Westerns
My Cormac McCarthy kick started in Texas in 2020, ending with his crazy and excellent novel The Passenger, a major departure from the rest.
 • Daniel Roberts
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