I have been given a number of Okawa books by an enthusiast and this might be my last one for a little while. Though I did have quite an experience outside Penn Station that makes me wonder… I was waiting for my train outside Penn Station at around 8:30am on Thursday. I was quite literally
I have read an Ocean Vuong poem or two prior to this, and have read about Ocean Vuong himself in The New Yorker. He was born in Saigon, lives in NYC, and is 31 years old, having written this, his first full-length collection of poems, in 2016. I’m pleased to report that I had to
I am off to a crazy late start to the summer reading challenge. Absorbed by family matters (parent care-giving), my mind has not been capable of being still long enough to read much of anything. But, for some reason, this little book by Susan Howe kept nagging at me to sit down. This is not
The docents at the art museum have a book club in the summers when touring activity is light. Today we discussed this book which was in progress when the author died. Since her hope had been to see it finished and published a close friend pulled it together and made sure that happened. (When I
I listened to this twelve-CD novel in my car. I’ve just noticed on the cover that Mark Helprin is the “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Winter’s Tale.” How weird is that, me having just finished Jeanette Winterson’s retelling of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale? I probably put this one on my list based on
This book came to me by way of the same patient who gave me A Spiritual Interview with George Washington. It is written by the same Japanese millionaire author. This book was interesting to read because there were elements of it that I completely agreed with, but I also absolutely felt that there were subtleties within the
In a previous season of our reading together, I have written about the work of Jeanette Winterson. I was attracted to this book not only because she wrote it, but also because it is Shakespeare’s play, “A Winter’s Tale,” re-imagined as a 267 page novel. I first saw the play sometime during the past decade
I discovered Rachel Held Evans when I read about her tragic death earlier this year. A young woman in her thirties, happily married, and mother of two small children, she died suddenly from an allergic reaction to a medication she was given for an infection. In her short life, she published a very popular blog
While James Baldwin is an iconic literary figure, I had never read his books. I joined a bookclub, and Giovanni’s Room is this month’s selection. The novel is magnificently written, but there is no relief from the tragic story that unfolds. The book cover reads: “Set in the 1950’s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and
Well, the book was technically a pretty fast read, but also pretty dark so it ended up getting set down periodically. You could finish it in a few evenings of bedtime wind-down reading. The whole thing is basically a long allegory for the consequences of human arrogance. It is worth reading, although if you are
Seasonal Reading 