Cathleen Schine

Stewardesses were a joke to many of us coming of age in the liberated Sixties. They were no joke in the women's movement that liberated us, however.

Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong.

Michael Chabon has long moved easily between the playful, heartfelt realism of novels like 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' and 'Wonder Boys' and his playful, heartfelt, more fantastical novels like 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' and 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.'

Nathaniel Rich wrote 'Odds Against Tomorrow' well before Hurricane Sandy and its surge crashed onto the isle of Manhattan, well before the streets were flooded and the subways drowned, only the Goldman Sachs building sparkling above the darkened avenues.

In my stunted career as a scholar, I'd read promissory notes, papal bulls and guidelines for Inquisitorial interrogation. Dante, too. Boccaccio... But after 1400? Nihil.

Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams.

There are no moral lectures in 'Lookaway, Lookaway;' there aren't even any lessons. But there is passion. It is a work that hides its craft but never its beauty, that is ambitious but never pretentious, that does not sacrifice nuance for power or power for nuance.

Women are in positions of power the most radical of activists could only dream of in 1960.

In 'Pictures from an Institution,' Randall Jarrell was able to transcend the academic novel by simply ignoring it, writing a comedy with no plot at all beyond his own pleasure in language and humanity itself.

What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal' was thrilling in its light, deceptive tone, its subtle but irresistible momentum.

One of my favorite passages in 'Leaves of Grass,' that breathless, exuberant poem so rich and full of innocence and joy and generosity and compassion, is 'Mannahatta.'

I was one of those children they used to call 'readers.'