At Books on the Wall, it’s no secret that we love reading—and if you’re here, we assume you do too! But if you’re anything like us, you probably spend waaaaaaay too much of your monthly budget on books. We can walk into a bookstore with the best of intentions—”only one book…okay, maybe two books…but that’s all, no more!”—but of course we always walk out with at least twice what we planned for. Not that this is such a bad thing. There are worse problems to be had, certainly. But some months, it’s just not a good idea to tempt ourselves […]
This F. Scott Fitzgerald quote comes from This Side of Paradise, which came out in 1920 and was the author’s first published novel. This Side of Paradise follows young Amory Blaine, who leaves his home in the Midwest to begin college at Princeton University. The novel received fairly positive reviews when it was first released, but it has never gained the public acclaim of Fitzgerald’s other works (like The Great Gatsby). It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise Can’t get enough of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Check out our post […]
This quote comes from Elie Wiesel’s acclaimed novel Night. Published in 1960, Night is based on Wiesel’s experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps from 1944 to 1945. The semi-autobiographical novel (some insist it is fiction) is divided into three parts: Night, Dawn, and Day. Night has become a staple of high school and college reading courses around the world and is part of the canon of fictional and non-fictional works about the Holocaust. Wiesel passed away on July 2, 2016, at his home in New York City. A founding member of the New York Human […]
This Nicole Krauss quote comes from her second published work, The History of Love. Published in 2005, the novel was a finalist for the Orange Prize in Fiction the following year. Fairly or not, The History of Love tends to be compared to the work of Krauss’s then-husband Jonathan Safran Foer. That work, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, was also Safran’s second novel, and the two works share several main character types and plot points: intelligent-beyond-their-years children without fathers who go on journeys to discover something and along the way stumble into remnants of Jewish heritage and historical and personal tragedies. […]
What is a serial novel? A serial novel is a work of fiction that is published in sequential pieces called installments. These installments can be published at nearly any interval for nearly any period of time, though weekly and monthly installments are most typical. Serialized novels have traditionally been published by literary magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals. In fact, the breakout hit podcast Serial got its name from this style of publishing a story in installments. Some serial novels—like The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins—were written specifically for that format, while others—like parts of Middlemarch by George Eliot—were originally intended to be a […]
This quote comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson was an early American poet who lived in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson’s poems are often short and unnamed, and they typically focus on themes of human mortality and death; in fact, most of her work was published posthumously. One of our favorite Dickinson poem, of course, speaks to the power of books: There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariot That bears […]
We’re excited announce the latest addition to our small book poster line: a 17″x11″ book poster featuring 212 fables from Aesop’s Fables. The poster contains a minimalist illustration of one of Aesop’s most famous tales, “The Hare and the Tortoise”: A Hare was one day making fun of a Tortoise for being so slow upon his feet. “Wait a bit,” said the Tortoise; “I’ll run a race with you, and I’ll wager that I win.” “Oh, well,” replied the Hare, who was much amused at the idea, “let’s try and see”; and it was soon agreed that the fox should set a course for them, […]
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Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me -Emily Dickenson, “Because I could not stop for Death” It will probably come as no surprise that we do a lot of reading, writing, and reading about reading and writing. And one of our favorite pastimes is learning about the lives of some of our favorite authors. What happened to them? How did they get started writing? What could have inspired their writing style, common themes, or favorite plot lines? Though every author has a different life story to tell, the following nine authors all shared at least one certainly deeply affecting […]
Published in 2014, A Brief History of Seven Killings is Marlon James’ third novel and follows the events leading up to and following the assassination attempt on Bob Marley’s life. With incredibly unique characters, multiple Englishes, and a sweeping storyline, A Brief History of Seven Killings is a “post-post-colonial” look at the complexity of Jamaican and American history, society, and pop culture. James is the first and only Jamaican-born author to have won the Man Booker Prize. “If it no go so, it go near so.” -A Jamaican proverb featured in the epigraph of Marlon James’ A Brief History of […]
