Patrick T. Reardon

Jan 14, 2025 | patricktreardon.com | Patrick T. Reardon

For eight months — September, 1940 to May, 1941 — the German Luftwaffe conducted a ferocious bombing campaign over London and other British cities and towns. An estimated 40,000 civilians were killed and as many as 139,000 injured. Two million homes damaged or destroyed, two-thirds of them in London which suffered an attack, on average, every three or four days. It was a brutal time that tested the mettle and spirit of the nation.

Jan 11, 2025 | thirdcoastreview.com | Patrick T. Reardon

Some time ago, a priest drove a bunch of us teenagers somewhere. As we headed down the Dan Ryan just past the turnoff for the Stevenson, he said, “Look out there at all those churches. Chicago sure is a Catholic city.” I remember looking out and seeing the many, many steeples rising to the sky above Chicago neighborhoods, as far as my eye could see. That was in the spring of 1963.

Jan 9, 2025 | patricktreardon.com | Patrick T. Reardon

Snuff is one of Terry Pratchett’s best Discworld novels. Which is saying a lot since the 41 books in the series have sold more than 80 million copies in 37 languages. And Snuff was published in 2011. Which is saying a lot more. Four years earlier, in December, 2007, Pratchett announced, at the age of 59, that he had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Jan 7, 2025 | patricktreardon.com | Patrick T. Reardon

I came to realize, as I read Anthony Burgess’s 1964 novel Nothing Like the Sun, that I have an image of William Shakespeare that is somewhat larger than life. Make that a lot larger. In Nothing Like the Sun, Burgess imagines the poet — whom he refers to as WS — during his teenage years and early twenties (roughly 1577-1587) and then in his late twenties and early thirties (1592-1599). His Shakespeare is a very human sort of person. As a youth, he’s unsure of what he should do with his life.

Jan 2, 2025 | patricktreardon.com | Patrick T. Reardon

Perhaps the most important sentence in Elena Ferrante’s 2011 novel My Brilliant Friend comes when fifteen-year-old Elena Greco is spending her summer on the island of Ischia across from her hometown Naples. Elena, the novel’s narrator, feels that she is falling in love with Nino Sarratore, tall and studious, two years her senior.