"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads.

What could seem further from our polarized, diverse world and abbreviated social-media discourse than Virginia Woolf’s 1925 stream-of-consciousness novel Mrs. Dalloway with its, aristocratic title ...

Before Woolf settled on the unique perspective for her modernist masterpiece, she had a more expansive, though traditional, book in mind — “The Hours.” By Lauren Christensen “I am the only woman in ...

Nearly all readers keep a mental bucket list of books that seemingly everyone in the world loves, but that they themselves — secretly hanging heads in shame — have never quite gotten round to. I, for ...

"What a lark! What a plunge!" Composer-lyricist John Coyne and librettist Brandon Adam are collaborating on a musical adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's classic novel about uncertainty, ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Not so much: Sentimentality, cooking. Bad at: Being a lawyer, sense of direction. Good at: Listening ...