On the Paris Review’s Web site, Lorin Stein responds to a reader who asks: “Which books would you recommend to a smart, bored, somewhat alienated teenage girl trapped in the suburbs?”

Dorothy Jane Mills co-wrote a book that bore her husband's name.

Don’t rate books, just stop publishing trashy YA dramas.

We don't need them.

Scholastic brings back The Babysitters Club.

The raunch culture that’s inundating our boys from babyhood.

What's lower on the ethical-decorating matrix: Owning shelves full of pretty books you've never read, or displaying your complete Dean Koontz library front-and-center?

A discussion of A.S. Byatt's sprawling new novel.

Louisa May Alcott's life of concession and depression.