Chris Wolak

Recent Posts - page 3

• Library Visit: Hagaman Memorial Library

  By Chris Wolak on June 30, 2020 • ( 4 )

  

  We’re back in Connecticut for this month’s library post, visiting The Hagaman Memorial Library in East Haven, CT. As I wrote last month, one of the big impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on my reading and working life… Read More ›

• Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

  By Chris Wolak on June 28, 2020 • ( 1 )

  

  Thanks to The Book of the Month Club, I just read my first Riley Sager novel and it was such a treat.* Home Before Dark is Sager’s forth novel. His prior novels are Final Girls, The Last Time I Lied,… Read More ›

• Response to “Before Breakfast.” The Willa Cather Short Story Project

  By Chris Wolak on June 24, 2020 • ( 7 )

  

  “Before Breakfast” by Willa Cather is the last story in the posthumously published collection, The Old Beauty and Others (1948). It’s a tight nugget of a story about a successful middle-aged businessman who escapes his work and family for a… Read More ›

• In Honor of Carlos Ruiz Zafón

  By Chris Wolak on June 21, 2020 • ( 12 )

  

  Carlos Ruiz Zafón passed away on Friday. Colon cancer. He was only 55. Ruiz Zafón is the author of one of my favorite novels, The Shadow of the Wind. It is a book I wish I could read again for… Read More ›

• June 2020 Reminder for The Willa Cather Short Story Project

  By Chris Wolak on June 10, 2020 • ( 0 )

  

  Our story this month is “Before Breakfast,” the final of the three stories in The Old Beauty and Others (1948). “Before Breakfast” was the last story Cather finished. She wrote it in the summer of 1944 while staying on Mt. Desert… Read More ›

• The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

  By Chris Wolak on June 1, 2020 • ( 3 )

  

  I read The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett for the 23rd Classics Club Spin. Today, June 1st, is the date by which participants were to have finished their spin book. This book has been on my… Read More ›

• Library Visit: Loyola University Chicago

  By Chris Wolak on May 31, 2020 • ( 7 )

  

  One of the big impacts that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on my reading and working life is not being able to go to the library, any library, for going on three months now. I commited to posting at least… Read More ›

• Response to “The Best Years.” The Willa Cather Short Story Project.

  By Chris Wolak on May 27, 2020 • ( 4 )

  

  These response posts assume you have read the story under discussion, so there are often spoilers . . . such is the case with this post. Leslie dies! I did not see that coming. Did you? Perhaps I didn’t see… Read More ›

• Join me at the First Ever Virtual Willa Cather Spring Conference!

  By Chris Wolak on May 24, 2020 • ( 2 )

  

  The annual Spring Willa Cather Conference has been held in Red Cloud, Nebraska for over sixty years. Rather than cancel the conference due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s 65th Willa Cather Spring Conference will be held virtually. Conference organizers… Read More ›

• 2020 Big Book Summer Challenge

  By Chris Wolak on May 23, 2020 • ( 10 )

  

  This is the ninth year that my friend Sue, who blogs at Book By Book, is hosting her Big Book Summer Challenge. The challenge runs from Memorial Day Weekend (May 25 this year) through Labor Day Weekend (September 7) and… Read More ›

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