"Never try to establish a successful flirtation when your hair is a mess." - Cynthia Heimel In the late 1980s I found a copy of Cynthia Heimel's Sex Tips for Girls at my favorite bookstore. I laughed out loud as I read the opening lines: "These are the times that try a girl's soul. We…

Thornfield Hall | A Book Blog

29.06.2025

A Quiet, Neglected Classic: Donald Hall’s “The Ideal Bakery” – Thornfield Hall

Little-known fact: The award-winning poet Donald Hall, the 14th Poet Laureate of the U.S., wrote an elegiac collection of short stories, The Ideal Bakery, published in paperback in 1988. Like the Vintage Contemporary series, the Perennial Library paperbacks had a distinctive design and published prestigious writers. Perhaps Perennial writers were less hip, but no less…

Thornfield Hall | A Book Blog

30.06.2025

What Class Are You? The Genealogy Crisis – Thornfield Hall

UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1950s: Woman writing letter. On a sunny, cold Friday in autumn when I coughed nonstop because I had bronchitis, I waited for the mail, expecting a note from a posh writing professor who kindly sent postcards to his former students, and insisted that it was no trouble to read our manuscripts.…

Thornfield Hall | A Book Blog

03.07.2025

Spinning Fans: More Paperback Series – Thornfield Hall

During a hot, humid, quasi-tropical summer, when three fans spun in our apartment, and it was too hot to go outside, I drank iced tea and contemplated my collection of paperbacks. Then I decided whimsically to arrange them by cover and publisher. We won't talk about Penguins. We all know about them. But one of the…

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Thornfield Hall | A Book Blog

Books & Literature

Cynthia Heimel, the Wittiest Humorist You’ve Never Heard of – Thornfield Hall

A Quiet, Neglected Classic: Donald Hall’s “The Ideal Bakery” – Thornfield Hall

What Class Are You? The Genealogy Crisis – Thornfield Hall

Spinning Fans: More Paperback Series – Thornfield Hall

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