Human Nature

From Plato's Republic to Sebastian Brant medieval satire to Katherine Anne Porter's bestselling novel, the idea that we are sailing on a ship of fools has intrigued many minds.

In the moving documentary Midsummer in Newtown, a production of a Shakespeare comedy starring local kids brings renewal to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Fort Greene, Brooklyn celebrates the successful launch of a vibrant community-supported bookstore, Greenlight.

I hope my pick for the most significant book of 2013 will surprise you. It surprises me. For one thing, it's not exactly a book. It wasn't published in 2013. And I've never mentioned it on Litkicks before.

Timothy Spall plays the artist J. M. W. Turner in a beautiful new film directed by Mike Leigh.

"In her novels and short stories, Cather developed plot lines and characters that revealed both the freedom of the artist to create and the social rejection of that imagination." An English teacher from Nebraska spends a few days exploring Red Cloud, Nebraska, where Willa Cather lived a quietly unique life.

A few things that have caught my attention: Anomalies by Charlie Kaufman, Elvis Costello's memoir (and the story of his father), everything by Virginia Woolf.

Bill Ectric ponders his favorite book of the Bible.

British novelist John Fowles, author of a postmodern sendup of ancient Greek mythology called 'The Magus', died this weekend at his home in Lyme Regis, England.

A disquieting novel about a strange child by Doris Lessing, the newest Nobel laureate.

How delightful to learn that James Joyce may have invented the word 'blog' during a typical conversational ramble in Finnegans Wake! Here it is in context ...

A new look at the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Cats" reveals surprising depth to its interpretation of T. S. Eliot's entire body of work, and his personal biography.

A look back at "The Romanesques", the early satirical romantic comedy by Edmond Rostand ("Cyrano de Bergerac") that would inspire the great Off-Broadway musical "The Fantasticks".

Magic Trip, a new film by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, tells the story of novelist Ken Kesey's 1964 road trip across America in a painted bus with a troupe of fanciful hippies and legendary beatnik Neal Cassady at the wheel.

The movies are over, J.K. Rowling has moved on to adult fiction, and yet here I am, lying curled between the couch and the heater, pinching the fat inner spine of The Goblet of Fire between my thumb and forefinger. This is my fifth time. As a teenager, I used to read by closet-light, flipping back to the first chapter immediately after finishing the last, as if expecting something new to happen. Only in Harry’s world could such an enchanted book exist ...

"One cannot read a book: one can only reread it." -Vladimir Nabokov

There is something akin to magic in reading a novel for the first time: the first brush with a new world of characters and creatures is thrilling to imagine; each turn of the page lures us deeper into the mystery of the dream; and, by the end, we arrive at a catharsis of completion and knowing.

Once the mystery is solved, however, the story does not lose its power. In rereading, one can explore the text for hidden delights tucked into each book, free from the burden of mystery and with a keener eye for dramatic irony. Throughout the series, nods and winks to future happenings and cross-textual connections shape the rest of Rowling’s ever-expanding, ever-darkening fantasy world. With a world so vast, it’s difficult to catch it all in one take.