The publication of a new Jonathan Franzen novel has a lot in common with the release of a new iPhone: Both early-autumn events are greeted with absurd amounts of anticipation, ...

Were he alive today, John Calvin wouldn’t be the first person I would invite to most book clubs. It’s hard to imagine he’d approve of the characteristic goings-on: the overemphasis ...

Early in Les Misérables, Victor Hugo describes an especially cruel kind of torture. A young woman, suspected of heresy, is stripped to the waist and tied to a post. As ...

Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy, maybe. Girl meets new boy. Girl really likes that boy, she thinks. Now what? By its very structure and elements, the ...

Literary types like to complain that no one reads big, meaningful novels anymore. These days, they tend to blame punch-drunk publishers, or all-saturating technology, or the cast of Jersey Shore ...