Seasonal Reading

The Forest Lover is based on the life of Emily Carr, a painter at the turn of the twentieth century (at the same time as Georgia O’Keeffe and Frieda Kahlo) .  She was raised with the expectation that she would enter polite White Vancouver society and live alongside, but separate from, Native Americans who lived

A few years ago when Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, came out, my very organized, neat, young neighbor decided it was a book I needed to own. I read it at the time, and I was bemused by the author’s dedication to tidying up. Because I’d read the book, I was

I’ve read more than I have written this winter.  I’ll try and catch up a bit. Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite author.  I loved the quirky characters in her early works.  Poisonwood Bible was a very powerful read.  I finally finished Prodigal Summer after many false starts.  Something always interrupted me, and I’d need to

First, my thanks to JNaz for calling the author Brian Doyle, and specifically the book Mink River to my attention.  What a glorious ride for 319 pages without once a letdown.  Prose poetry in the form of a novel.  Yes, as JNaz mentioned, Doyle is sparse on punctuation and fulsome on adjectives and lists, but

I’m on the road this week, so I have nothing to post since my Shelley essay! It is time for midterms and lots of paper reading. But, I’ve got Margaret Atwood’s second book from the MaddAddam trilogy with me. I didn’t carry many books with me, but I think I’ll head over to the local library

This 30 page essay was a great way to kick off a late February Saturday morning. Neighbor Dave dropped off a Harvard Classic compilation of essays that reads on the spine “English Essays Sidney to Macauley”. Shelley’s essay grabbed my attention at the title. Feeling particularly vulnerable and unsafe as a person in America these

Henry Marsh is a doctor who writes interesting “Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery” (that’s the subtitle of this book).  I’ve always been interested in medicine, so I lap up books like this one.  I’m a fan of Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande, for instance.  While it’s terrifying to know so much about what

I read this book because I saw a recommendation from a favorite author of mine, George Saunders.  This is Adjei-Brenyah’s first book.  His dedication is:  “For my mom, who said, ‘How can you be bored?  How many books have you written?’” These stories take on some of the big issues:  violence in our society based

I haven’t written anything about my reading for too long, and since I’m still not ready I thought I’d just tell you about that!  My reading pattern during this winter period has been atypical.  I’ve been interweaving books since the start, mostly because of library due dates that cannot be extended. I was listening to