Paul Dry Books - News

RAVE REVIEWS FOR 'NB BY J . C.'

2023-05-24T15:37:21-04:00

The New York Times, Washington Post, and New Criterion have all reviewed James Campbell's NB by J. C.

“One part of the TLS no one skips, in my experience, is the NB column, which runs inside the back cover . . . It’s a small treat for readers who make it to the end. From 1997 to 2020, its golden age, the column was signed J.C. This correspondent has officially been outed as James Campbell, a biographer of James Baldwin and a longtime editor at the magazine. He was a good steward of the column, and his best material has been collected now in NB by J.C.: A Walk Through the Times Literary Supplement.”
—New York Times

Read the full review.

“‘NB’ might be loosely described as a gossip column for the erudite. . . . James Campbell made it into something more—a uniquely personal miscellany of wit, weirdness and waspish provocation. NB by J.C.—a selection of columns—highlights its singularity.”
—Washington Post

Read the full review.

“Catnip to literary types and word addicts.”
—New Criterion

KIRKUS ON 'ARK'

2023-05-24T15:31:06-04:00

Kirkus Reviews calls ARK "infectiously hopeful." Read the full review.

BOOKLIST REVIEWS 'I DON'T SMOKE ENOUGH TO QUIT'

2023-01-30T12:25:48-05:00

Booklist reviewed Robert J. Dreesen's I Don't Smoke Enough to Quit:

“Dreesen presents an unusual and welcoming memoir-in-verse, an epic colloquial journey through his childhood in a chaotic, eight-kid family as they ran a 24-hour highway truck stop and popular roadhouse in Nebraska. Dreesen portrays the intriguing characters they met as well as the characters they became . . . Dreesen expertly plays with language, cadence, texture, emotion, memory, and facts to impart the sense that all our knowledge is ‘second hand,’ full of miscomprehension of other people and their perceptions, and yet our experiences are precious, our stories illuminating.”

Read the full review. (Booklist subscribers only)

LARB on EVA BRANN AND 'PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS'

2023-01-13T12:11:15-05:00

Peggy Ellsberg wrote a long and glowing review of Eva Brann's Pursuits of Happiness in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

“[Brann] is a person of many strong interests. The central chapter of this book, 'On Being Interested,' offers a road map to staying happy: cultivate real interests . . . As an American, my encounter with Brann’s work calls me back to a sense of my own good fortune. Against a keening background noise of lament—over the economy, the climate, the pandemic, the predations of technology, crime—Eva Brann’s bright witness lifts me up and out.”

Read the full review.

NYRB on 'My Hollywood'

2022-09-30T16:09:20-04:00

Anahid Nersessian wrote a lovely review of Boris Dralyuk's My Hollywood and Other Poems in the New York Review of Books.

"“Dralyuk embraces rhyme with a rare and admirable enthusiasm for sound and syllable, for musical variety and plays on words . . . [An] air of upbeat sorrow permeates My Hollywood. It’s an émigré mood, defined by the conviction that things could always be worse.”

Read the full review.

WSJ reviews "'Strange to Say'

2022-09-30T16:03:07-04:00

The Wall Street Journal reviewed Deborah Warren's Strange to Say, saying, "[Warren's] curiosity and embrace of the unpredictable, as well as her delight in both the archaic and the homespun, animate Strange to Say, a tour of English that savors the language's mutability."

Read the full review (WSJ subscribers only).

McSweeney's, BOOKLIST, AND MORE ON 'MY HOLLYWOOD'

2022-06-07T09:44:52-04:00

McSweeney's, Booklist, The Poetry Foundation, and more have recently run glowing reviews of MY HOLLYWOOD AND OTHER POEMS by Boris Dralyuk.

"These [poems] are the souvenirs of an almost-vanished glamour, an ethnic, gritty, free-wheeling city, little fantasias encased in rhyme and meter."—Jesse Nathan, McSweeney's

"Sophisticated, musical, and often humorous."—Booklist

“Throughout My Hollywood, Dralyuk crafts polished lyric tableaux, enlivened by formal wit, wry anticlimaxes, delightfully mixed emotions, and exacting descriptive details that hint at the multiple stories percolating beneath.”—The Hudson Review

"Throughout, the ache of exile reverberates against the irretrievability of the past, but there’s also a quality of lightness in the poems, stemming from a fascination of place and the delights of Dralyuk’s prosody."—The Poetry Foundation's "Harriet Books" blog

"[Dralyuk's] subjects are faded landmarks, artists one doesn’t expect to find in LA like Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Arnold Schoenberg, or film stars of a bygone age. He writes with enthusiasm about diminished lives, and the result in this first collection of poems, My Hollywood, is a book of elegant realism, a worthy addition to the poetry of 'Los Angeles.'"—The Los Angeles Review

"My Hollywood is a first-rate collection of precise, delightfully graceful poems, the poet as Fred Astaire tap-dancing up and down the lines."—Russian Life

WSJ and WaPo on 'JUST GO DOWN TO THE ROAD'

2022-06-07T09:31:55-04:00

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreword Reviews and more have run rave reviews of JUST GO DOWN TO THE ROAD by James Campbell.

"An engrossing account of a young man discovering what he wants to do with his life."―Michael Dirda, Washington Post

"This deftly written memoir . . . is the story of a writer finding his own voice."―Wall Street Journal

“Just Go Down to the Road brings an exciting time in world and literary history to life. It’s a remarkable travel account that began with the simple suggestion: 'Just go down to the road, Jim. You’ll get a lift .'"―Foreword Reviews

"Above all, this is a memoir not so much of trouble – though Campbell acknowledges that but for the grace of literature, trouble might have been his lot – as of opportunity. Campbell joins a line of modern Scots, running from Robert Louis Stevenson to the anarchist vagabond Stuart Christie, who have just gone down to the road and taken it from there."—Times Literary Supplement

"Just Go Down to the Road takes us along on the many twists and turns of Campbell’s journey from teenage rebel to the heights of British intellectual and literary life. The book is bursting with vignettes and adventures en route, including a generous selection of black-and-white snapshots.”—American Scholar

HARVARD MAGAZINE FEATURE ON ELISABETH SHARP MCKETTA

2021-11-04T13:07:29-04:00

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta, author of She Never Told Me About the Ocean, was featured in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Harvard Magazine: How Myth and Memoir Intertwine.

BOOKLIST ON DEBORAH WARREN

2021-10-25T09:20:26-04:00

Booklist reviewed Deborah Warren's poetry collection Connoisseurs of Worms: "Immensely engaging . . . Steeped in references to Greek and Roman history and literature, this book sings with an erudite yet accessible energy one might expect from a former Latin teacher. After finishing this collection, readers will definitely want to dive into the rest of Warren's oeuvre."

Read the full review.

Booklist Online also reviewed Deborah Warren's Strange to Say, calling it "a great read for those who appreciate seeing the whimsy in words, as Warren remarkably achieves etymological entertainment."

Read the full review.

WSJ and LARB love 'MISS BISHOP'

2021-02-16T11:01:12-05:00

The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Booklist, and more have run glowing reviews of STUDYING WITH MISS BISHOP by Dana Gioia.

Michael Dirda, in the Washington Post, recommended MISS BISHOP in a column on "books about books."

"Highly enjoyable . . . Studying with Miss Bishop offers the opportunity to encounter writing as an act of civility."―Wall Street Journal

"[A] fantastically charming collection."―Los Angeles Review of Books

"Wonderfully evocative of the literary world in the 1970s and 1980s, these essays are fascinating snapshots of remarkable encounters which, when brought together, chart a delightfully unusual path to literary success."―Booklist

"Studying With Miss Bishop is surely destined to become a classic. These affectionate portraits . . . communicate as well as any book ever the love that underlies an authentic literary vocation."―Catholic World Report

"In deft, graceful essays, poet, literary critic, and librettist Gioia recalls six 'people of potent personality' who shaped his vocation . . . An appealing literary memoir."―Kirkus Reviews

PW on 'WONDER & WRATH'

2020-10-19T09:47:56-04:00

Publishers Weekly reviewed A. M. Juster's Wonder & Wrath, saying "Juster’s poems are textured with rhyme and images that find correlatives between manmade threats and the natural world."

Read the full review.

AE STALLINGS ON SHORTLIST FOR NATIONAL TRANSLATION AWARDS

2020-10-04T17:47:14-04:00

The Battle between the Frogs and the Mice, translated from the Greek by A. E. Stallings, has made the shortlist for the 2020 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. The award is administered by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and the finished English work.

Read more about the award.

'WONDER & WRATH' in BOOKLIST

2020-10-04T17:44:06-04:00

Booklist reviewed A. M. Juster's new book of poetry, Wonder & Wrath, calling it a "strong collection" and "not to be missed":

Juster is a formalist poet with nine previous collections, including The Secret Language of Women (2002), which received the Richard Wilbur Award. Juster regards the common and the sacred in the everyday. In "Cassandra," the mythical priestess to Apollo briefly surveys her role and states “My beheading is still years ahead. / a blade is always being honed for me.” In considering the violence of survival in our backyards, "Surveillance" offers a subtle observance of jays plotting plunder upon a nest of young sparrows: “they seem to savor / how their prey / keeps quavering / and squittering.” A wry humor giggles its way into the poet’s defense of the Bard in "Untamed Daughter": “‘Shakespeare uses language well, / but could have been, like, more original.’” Sections titled "Outer," "Inner," and "Other" form a cohesive triptych that anchors this strong collection, which includes Juster's skilled translations of poems by Li Po and Rimbaud, and a take on a Bob Dylan classic that is very funny and not to be missed.

AE STALLINGS LONGLISTED FOR National Translation Awards

2020-09-02T16:31:00-04:00

The Battle between the Frogs and the Mice, translated from the Greek by A. E. Stallings, has been longlisted for the 2020 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. The award is administered by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) and includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and the finished English work.

Read more about the award.

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS ON AE STALLINGS

2020-07-12T13:54:00-04:00

The London Review of Books reviewed The Battle between the Frogs and Mice, translated by A. E. Stallings and illustrated by Grant Silverstein:

With two introductions – one under Stallings’s name and another by ‘A. Nony Mouse’ – plus a glossary of dramatis personae, an appendix and the notes of an erudite classicist, this is a playful yet serious work of scholarship in miniature. It shouldn’t be so rare for a poet to be serious and to sparkle at the same time, but Stallings is one of the few.

Read the full review.

WIRO REVIEWS 'THE JOY OF SORCERY'

2020-07-11T13:09:00-04:00

The Washington Independent Review of Books reviewed The Joy of Sorcery by Sten Nadlony, calling it, "A stirring call for the next generation to learn the lessons of the past. Ultimately, what Pahroc chooses to pass on to his granddaughter and the reader is a reminder that life has a magic all its own . . . For us mortals, it’s a reassuring call to find our own wonder in the world."

Read the full review.

'DOTTORESSA' IN THE TLS

2020-06-20T11:27:00-04:00

The Times Literary Supplement reviewed Susan Levenstein's
Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome, calling it a "lighthearted yet trenchant memoir."

Read the full review.

BRYN MAWR CLASSICAL REVIEW ON A. E. STALLINGS

2020-06-13T13:45:00-04:00

Bryn Mawr Classical Review featured A. E. Stallings' The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice calling it, "A delightful surprise . . . Clever puns and plays-on-words punctuate the translation and the introduction . . . There is something Carrollian in Stallings’ taste for puns and in the lightness of her translation as a whole . . . Grant Silverstein’s gracious etchings of animals and gods evoke well-known drawings by Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and provide a lively visual counterpart to the narrative."

Read the full review.

A DELIGHTFUL REVIEW FROM LIGHT POETRY MAGAZINE

2020-05-24T11:30:00-04:00

Light Poetry Magazine reviewed The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice by A. E. Stallings and Grant Silverstein:

"The battle begins in Aesopian style with a frog luring a mouse to its death. (Was it deliberate? You decide.) The subsequent outcry leads to all-out war, albeit a tiny one. Those familiar with the Iliad will thrill at its miniaturization. The names of the heroes (King Pufferthroat begins the plot, and one whiskered Morselsnatcher is its fiercest fighter), the armor and armaments (chickpea shells for helmets and bean pods for shin protection, spears made of rushes), and the inevitable interference of the gods are all present and adorably parallel with expectations. It even ends with a crustaceus ex machina you will not expect."

Read the full review.

BOOKLIST REVIEWS 'THE KING OF NOTHING MUCH'

2020-03-17T19:35:00-04:00

Booklist reviewed The King of Nothing Much by Jesse Edward Johnson in its March 15, 2020 issue, calling it, "a bighearted riff on masculine anxiety."

Read the full review.

LARB LOVES 'THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE FROGS AND THE MICE'

2020-03-11T10:13:00-04:00

The Los Angeles Review of Books ran a long review praising The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice, translated by A. E. Stallings and illustrated by Grant Silverstein:

"It takes real poetic skill to parody a master so subtly that the result becomes mistaken for the poetry of the master himself at play. And now, in A. E. Stallings translation of the Batrachomyomachia, we have what seems a comparably ambitious and convincing re-creation of that ancient recreation. Stallings is both a trained classicist and a well-regarded poet in English. And she is especially well regarded for her seemingly natural command of meter and rhyme — a command that’s uncommon in our era. Her rhymed couplets are the product of an innately sensitive ear . . . The main section presents the poem interwoven on every page with Silverstein’s pencil drawings — of frogs and mice and weasels and hawks and snakes and gods with human faces. At first, I thought of the illustration as maybe somewhat analogous to medieval illumination. But as I read on, I realized it wasn’t that at all. There’s too much drama in the drawings’ visual punctuation. I instead came to appreciate their larger role as visual harmonics — a substitute for a lyre, of sorts, accompanying the combined voices of bard and translator. They are an integral part of the success of this small volume, which I am very glad to have read."

Read the full review.

CHAPTER 16 PRAISES MARK JARMAN'S 'DAILINESS'

2020-02-18T13:03:00-05:00

Chapter 16 praises Mark Jarman and his new book Dailiness: Essays on Poetry, calling it "an uplifting way to think about writing daily."

"In Dailiness: Essays on Poetry, Mark Jarman never shies away from important—some might argue ineffable—topics such as faith, mortality, and selfhood. And yet he wades into these subjects with humility and an implicit acknowledgement that despite his obvious intelligence and education, he is still somebody’s son, father, teacher, and neighbor. It is through this unspoken acknowledgement that the real wisdom of these essays is revealed."
Read the full review.

AUTHOR S. J. DAHLSTROM WINS 3RD WILL ROGERS AWARD

2019-10-29T13:53:00-04:00

Author S. J. Dahlstrom has won his third Will Rogers Medallion Award. His middle grade novel Black Rock Brothers, the fifth book in the Adventures of Wilder Good series, came in second place for Western Fiction for Young Readers.

STARRED REVIEW FROM KIRKUS FOR 'TAKE IT LYING DOWN'

2019-07-03T10:51:00-04:00

Kirkus Reviews gave a starred review to Jim Linnell's Take It Lying Down: Finding My Feet After a Spinal Cord Injury:

“A powerful exploration of navigating physical disability . . . Every chapter is filled with memorable analogies and metaphors, making Linnell’s journey to partial recovery a pleasurable intellectual experience for readers despite the horrors, fears, and winding mental path through rehab . . . A stunning account.”

Read the full review.

THE NEW CRITERION ON 'GLAUCON'S FATE'

2019-06-12T15:13:00-04:00

Khalil M. Habib reviewed Glaucon's Fate by Jacob Howland in the June 2019 issue of The New Criterion, calling the book "one of the most interesting and insightful treatments of Plato's Republic in years" Habib went on to say, "We may never know the real Socrates, but Howland's mastery and interpretation of an impressive array of works from Plato's time, along with his insight into many Platonic dialogues, including and especially the Republic, makes this book a must-read for anyone interested in Plato, Socrates, and the life of philosophy."

Read the full review.

THE NEW CRITERION ON JOHN VERNEY'S WAR MEMOIRS

2019-04-29T15:10:00-04:00

The New Criterion reviewed John Verney's Going to the Wars and A Dinner of Herbs in its May 2019 issue, saying:

They have charm and high literary quality and are testaments to the art of self-deprecation and a world in which memoirists drew attention to the people they knew rather than to themselves. Verney had, at times, a taxing and dangerous war, but to read his accounts of it, one might think he was merely an observer. They are marvelously entertaining reads, not least because they open up to us a world that has just passed from view; and they speak to us in a voice we understand, but that is no longer entirely familiar.

Read the full review.

'DOTTORESSA' IN KIRKUS

2019-03-13T12:08:00-04:00

Kirkus Reviews calls Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome "a charming story well told" in their April 2019 issue.

Read the full review.

TLS FEATURES DAVID MASON

2019-03-04T11:49:00-05:00

The Times Literary Supplement reviewed two of poet David Mason's recent books including Voices, Places (Paul Dry Books, January 2018), calling it, "A collection of literary essays with a personal spin, as enjoyably unpredictable in their subject matter as the poems."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY PRAISES 'DOTTORESSA'

2019-02-04T10:01:00-05:00

Publishers Weekly reviewed Susan Levenstein's Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome :

“While sharing the many difficulties she’s faced as an outsider to the Italian health-care system—with its piles of paperwork, unwritten rules, and old boy networks—Levenstein also writes a love letter to Italy . . . The first chapters recount, with a combination of exasperation and humor, the years-long obstacle course she encountered in her quest to practice medicine in the country. She proceeds to talk about everything from what a well-dressed Italian physician should wear, to, in a particularly wise and witty chapter, love and sex from both an Italian and an American perspective. A timely epilogue discusses the Affordable Care Act from her unique position as an American expat and an Italian physician, with Levenstein reflecting on how Italians, despite widespread dissatisfaction with their own health system, manage to live more healthily than Americans.”

Read the full review.