Now read this!

Now read this!

Posted on March 8th, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

Tomorrow at noon my first When Falls The Coliseum column on books will be published under the title “Now Read This!” Thanks to Scott Stein for suggesting the concept and offering it to me. The premise is simple. I’ll write brief essays on books I’ve read that perhaps you’ve always considered reading yourself, but have put off until now.

As an unreconstructed 70’s English major (who fondly remembers the New Criticism), I’ve continued to read throughout my adult working life, even though that work, mostly in the symphony orchestra business, had nothing to do with books. I’ve tended to follow my “enthusiasms.” I’ll discover an author, like Balzac or Alice Munro, and proceed to read as many of his/her works as I can until the “enthusiasm” runs its course. So, not only will I write on a specific book, but I’ll often conclude with a short list of additional recommendations for the same author. And, I intend always to include one or two extended quotes from the work at hand, to give you a sense of the author’s style.

For the most part, I’ll focus on novels, unconfined to either country or century, but I will also recommend the occasional short story or story collection, or poem or book of poetry.

Finally, I invite comment. “Now Read This!” will have its own point of view, strongly held (I assure you), but I will love nothing more than to be challenged, even contradicted in my assessment of a book’s value. And, though I promise to be as accurate as I can be, I will not be thoroughly rereading books in order to write about them — so please correct a mistake when I make one. Until tomorrow!

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.