Delphinium Books Blog

When a Book Idea Demands a Larger Stage

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman is considered by many World War I experts as a must-read for anyone interested in the geographic chess game that led up to what is arguably the greatest war the world has ever seen. The book’s wide scope combined with a riveting narrative is perhaps what makes it stand out among the drier, more academic World War I books. Leaving the story of the buildup to World War I to Tuchman, it’s fascinating to read up on how the author came to write the book. [Read more…]

Having recently traveled in Canada, I came to the same conclusion that I always do when I cross the border: that our neighbor to the north is more sane, organized and in some ways more progressive. Certainly in terms of social issues, gender equality, and the general population’s support for marriage between same-sex partners.

But Canada also strikes me to be more literate in terms of how much of the populations seems to read avidly. [Read more…]

A literary novel in digital form recently went on sale, and I decided to spend $2.00 with the idea of reading it on a four-hour plane journey. I also downloaded a novel of suspense that was published in the seventies and that won the Edgar Award for best suspense/thriller/mystery/crime novel of the year. And while the literary novel got lots of good reviews, I came away from reading it thinking that the author could have learned something about storytelling from the novelist who won the Edgar Award. [Read more…]

So what has become the preeminent vehicle for a motion picture: the television mini-series; or full feature-length movie that opens in theaters? I vote for the mini-series. [Read more…]

A recent New Yorker short story entitled Foreign-Returned by Sadia Shepard was criticized by Francine Prose as being a rip-off and a retelling of a Mavis Gallant short story published in the magazine in the 1960’s. Prose’s contention is that Shepard’s story took the same plot, the same situation between characters and even some of the same language found in the Gallant story and appropriated it. At the very least, Prose seems to feel, the story should have been published with some sort of attribution to Gallant. [Read more…]