"Paradise was gone for good, the revolution would never happen; all that was left was making noise." Meet Anthony and Hacine—fourteen, seventeen, sons of factory workers. They grew up somewhere in eastern France where the future died before they were born...

Buru Quartet II. "Every backward people gets subjugated by every nation more advanced than it." Back to Indonesia with Toer's massive novelistic canvas—the Buru Quartet—throwing us into colonial Java. Volume one set the stage...

"Sure, dreamers won't save us—not them, not their followers. But without dreams and dreamers, the curse on us would be seven times worse." Amos Oz just left us, but it's never too late to discover or rediscover his work...

"It's the intensity with which readers care about us—intensity that can grow or fade over time—that gives us existence and keeps us alive." I'm becoming a true Pierre Bayard fan, eagerly waiting for each new literary investigation...

"I have to do it, raise her, protect her. And no one ever tells you what it means. To hurl your kid into this world. And no one ever warns you about the real dangers." Among my new year's resolutions: read more in English...

"Writing was indeed the product of another me, a product precisely meant to pull me out of the state I was in, even though it consisted of describing that state." I wasn't sure I wanted to read this book everyone was talking about...

Like every year, I played this little new year's game: a self-portrait drawn with titles from my 2018 readings. Describe yourself: The Girl on Fire. How do you feel? Swing Time. Describe where you live: The Ministry of Supreme Happiness...

2018 wasn't my most epic year as a reader. Totally focused on my La Rochelle relocation project, I devoted little time to reading and really struggled to find books that truly grabbed me...

"Believing he'd chosen life, he'd chosen the next page." Because she loved his books, Josyane Savigneau wanted to meet Philip Roth. She was a journalist at Le Monde des livres then, and he was (already) one of America's greatest writers...

"When I'm tired of myself, I become someone else, then someone else, then someone else again." For weeks I've struggled with every book I picked up—nothing worked for me. Thankfully, the new Bello arrived to shake me out of my stupor...