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“Our lives unfold like stories, and I’m on to the next chapter. One page at a time…’’ That was the ending of the farewell column I penned for the Orlando Sentinel in June 2005 after 20 years as book critic. The systemic lupus I had battled since 1987 had finally gotten the best of me, forcing me out on disability. But I also have discovered over time that “On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever,’’ or almost. Not as fast (I was a speed demon); not as long (I have to nap several times a day); not as much (I can’t do the book-a-day thing). But I have been reading. And I miss writing and talking about books. This blog is my attempt to get back in the habit of writing, and not just “in my head.’’
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Nancy G Pate
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever The life of a reader, one page at a time...

English - Book Review, Book, Lupus
http://patebooks.wordpress.com/
On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 4d ago

If you like it

Lately it seems as if everything I read reminds me of another book or author. This is not necessarily a bad thing because it often leads to playing a favorite game of “This and That.” You know:  “If you like this, then you should read that.” Or vice-versa. To wit, if you like Kate Atkinson’s crime [
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 2W ago

While Mom was sleeping

Grace Covey appears asleep to family and friends at her hospital bed. To the doctors, Grace is in a coma after the traumatic injuries she suffered when she ran into a burning school to find her teenage daughter. To Grace herself, she apparently is having an out-of-body experience, aware of what’s go
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 3W ago

The view from here

Watching the first two episodes of the new HBO series “Girls,” I chuckled, cringed and laughed out loud. That was when 24-year-old Hannah announced to her parents that she believed she was “the voice of her generation,” or at least “a voice,” and needed $1100 a month for the next two years to finish
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 1M ago

Spies, lies, crimes, capers

Trapped in waiting rooms, I turn to thrillers for escape. And doctors wonder why my blood pressure’s up. Like Joseph Kanon and Alan Furst, Mark Mills is adept at historical espionage. His atmospheric fourth novel The House of the Hunted (Random House, digital galley via NetGalley) is set in the seem
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 1M ago

Brief encounter

You may have heard that Anne Tyler includes a ghost in her new novel, The Beginner’s Goodbye. The ghost is Dorothy, a short middle-aged radiologist killed when a tree falls on her house one August. Some months later, she appears to her grieving husband Aaron, a 36-year-old editor at a small Baltimor
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 1M ago

Something to talk about

Novelist Meg Wolitzer has a thoughtful essay in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review about women’s literary fiction and how it often is unjustly  relegated to “the second shelf” below books by men. She notes, however, that she is using the term “women’s fiction” to discuss “literature that happens
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 1M ago

Family matters

Twenty years ago this month, I wrote an enthusiastic review of Carol Anshaw’s first novel, Aquamarine. “Filled with real life and emotion, Anshaw’s inventive novel celebrates the possibilities and pluralities in all our lives, showing us how choices made long ago steer us in unforseen directions.” H
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 2M ago

Novel history

Good historical novels mix fiction with fact as they anchor readers in past time and place. So I’ve recently sweltered under the sun at an antebellum plantation in the Mississippi Delta, survived the sinking of the Titanic and its aftermath, enjoyed the pleasures of belle epoque Amsterdam, and liste
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 2M ago

Reading as fast as I can

My recent appetite for books is bordering on the insatiable. No sooner do I check out a new book from the library or receive an ARC in the mail than I read about another title I that sounds great or someone mentions a book not yet on my radar. It reminds me of when I was a kid and [...]
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On a Clear Day, I Can Read Forever · 2M ago

Freezer burn

Ever since a friend visited Iceland several years ago, I’ve wanted to see it for myself. After reading Elizabeth Hand’s new crime novel, Available Dark, I still want to go — I think. Perhaps the stunning, sinister bleakness she describes is best appreciated from the comforts of a warmer clime. Hand’
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