Dec

24

Christmas Traditions.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

December 24, 2007 | 1 Comment

I mentioned previously that I have two very personal holiday traditions, and that one of them is reading A Child’s Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas. The other is that I read another Christmas story, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. This is a kinder, gentler Capote than the one who wrote In Cold Blood, [...]

Dec

21

It Was A Dark And Stormy Year.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

December 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Defining the absolute worst may be at least as difficult as defining the best, if not more so. After all, very few writers deliberately set out to be bad. Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton didn’t try to be a bad writer, but, even if you’ve never heard of him, or his novel Paul Clifford, you’re probably familiar [...]

Dec

19

The Best Of The Best.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

December 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment

How we define what’s best in any particular area is  extremely subjective, but some editors bravely rise to the task, sorting through and trying to make judgments about the year’s best. Here are some of this year’s selections, as well as some award winners for the year 2007.
Every year the publisher Houghton Mifflin publishes volumes [...]

Dec

12

A Reader’s Christmas In Wales.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

December 12, 2007 | 2 Comments

I have two very personal holiday traditions. The first is, on Christmas Eve, I always pull out and read my copy of A Child’s Christmas In Wales by Dylan Thomas. This particular copy is small, almost a pamphlet, with woodblock illustrations, and it’s extremely special to me because I bought it in a shop just [...]

Dec

5

I’m In The Money.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

December 5, 2007 | 3 Comments

I’m a coin collector. It started when I was a kid and my parents gave me a portfolio for collecting pennies, and I spent hours going through piles of pennies trying to fill it. Unlike most coin collectors I’ve known I haven’t pursued U.S. coins. It’s not that I have anything against U.S. coins, and, [...]