Marilynne Robinson on her reading habits (her favorite genre is non-fiction), the gap separatingHousekeepingfromGilead(it was a period filled more with productivity than despair), and the literary character she'd most like to meet (Ishmael).A great tradition: the Morning News Tournament of Books, in which the best books from the past year square off against one another, March Madness-style.Teju Cole, author ofOpen City, has posted a series of tweets in which the opening of a famous novel is interrupted by a drone attack. A typical example: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven."Francine Prose on dreaming in literature.

Anthony Domestico is chair of the English and Global Literatures Department at Purchase College, and a frequent contributor to Commonweal. His book Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period is available from Johns Hopkins University Press.

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