READ ALL ABOUT IT
Since 2012, I’ve been writing about books. And the act of reading. And the importance of story and narrative. But, mostly, the underlying theme of all I write is how taking a moment to stop and digest some longform text — instead of scrolling, instead of watching a video, instead of multitasking — can be one of the most grounding things we can do for ourselves. Here’s the one-stop online home for all this writing.
You can read more about me and my work by moseying over here. Want to peruse periodic “essay drops” — excerpts from my work-in-progress essay collection about Homesickness? Here ya go.
Mother Daughter Widow Wife and The Life to Come
Someone asked me the other day how I select the books I read. I had to think about that, actually. Because truthfully, it’s just sort of a whim thing. I’m a greedy book acquirer, thanks to the library, so I’m often trying to read many books at once.
Wrap Me Up in a Complicated Blardigan: On Oh William! and Transcendent Kingdom
The Boston Globe Magazine’s January 23 cover story was “30 Great Comfort Foods”; the cover was festooned with a tantalizing picture of chicken and waffles from Brassica Kitchen + Cafe in Jamaica Plain, a fairly gentrified and artsy neighborhood in Boston that nonetheless still tries to cling to a working class/relatable vibe. Here’s the lead blurb to this compilation, which includes delicacies from honey-glazed biscuits, to ramen, to nine-hour French onion soup: “When temperatures drop and New Year’s resolutions fall by the wayside, we all need something to warm our souls.
Transcendent Kingdom
When’s the last time you started a book in one place and finished it in another? I don’t mean like the couch and then your bed; more like two totally different geographic locations. Or maybe I should just say “settings” because perhaps the act of reading a book can be like its own story in and of itself.
Swamplandia!
“Domestic fiction,” but make it on a swampy Florida island with a family of alligator wrestlers. Geek Love (Katherine Dunn) x Everything Under (Daisy Johnson) x a teeny tiny smidge of Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens). Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.
The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction
Today is #WorldReadAloudDay. And reading aloud is not just for kids, you know. As for me and my house, perhaps my husband and I will read from The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction by Meghan Cox Gurdon after our exciting trip to Home Depot this evening. Very meta, with a new kitchen faucet on the side for good measure.
Hannah Coulter
“Our story is the story of our place…” Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry.
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
“The man could…talk about the irony of it all, of people being given power because they were good at shouting against the enslaving things of Europe, and of the same people using the same power for chasing after the same enslaving things.” – Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born
Station Eleven
Station Eleven was published in 2014, so I’m wondering what all the pre-2020 readers thought of this, Emily St. John Mandel’s “pandemic novel.” I can’t stop thinking about it. Not just because of the mentions of contagion, incubation periods, symptoms, and quarantine that are all so eerily familiar. Those phrases will resonate with a post-2020 reader in a different, more concrete way.
Oh William!
Required reading for all introspective individuals — those who often wonder what things “mean” — and those who love them. Which I hope is everyone at one point or another.
The Midnight Library
I’ve just finished The Midnight Library by Matt Haig for my Class of 94 book club. (Friends, do you think we need an official name?!) Haig, despite authoring bestsellers many times over (The Midnight Library is a Good Morning America pick), is the recipient of mountains of criticism that he’s too schlocky or self-help-ish.
The Paper Palace and The Nest
Two novels taking place in the Northeast. Stereotypes: intact. Shabby “chic” family compounds, seemingly erudite New Yorkers who jostle to be a part of a scene, breezy yet overly confident in *everything.*
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
Why, in fiction, do women have the corner on: being neurotic, desperately seeking one’s purpose, and/or flirtations with malaise? Carol Shields upended that narrative with Larry’s Party, and Joshua Ferris has done it also with A Calling for Charlie Barnes.
The Neighbor’s Secret
Here’s why this book — so different than what I normally read — caught my eye. The Neighbor’s Secret by L. Alison Heller was featured as a recent NYT Group Text “book club” pick, and I was taken in because a neighborhood book club acts as the grounding “institution” for the subtly catty yet loud and proud I-just-want-to-raise-good-and-kind-humans crowd of mamas. (🥴) I suspected some blink-or-you’ll-miss-it sarcasm would abound...and I was right.
Brothers on Three
I recently read something, somewhere (#precise) about the book Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation on Montana by journalist Abe Streep. So I checked it out from the library. And then I read it, and now I am recommending it to you.
Bewilderment
Is Richard Powers’ entire MO to gently prod readers to flip life on its side so we can learn to approach our investigation of it differently? Bewilderment is only the second novel of his that I’ve read, but it seems fitting to (almost) end out 2021 with his latest — an Oprah pick, btw — after jumpstarting this crazy year reading The Overstory with my husband. I guess I’ll have to read more Richard Powers to find out.
Rising Out of Hatred
Gearing up to discuss this one tomorrow with a handful of high school classmates. Yes, I read Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow over Thanksgiving break, which feels inappropriate for some reason, i.e. it’s not exactly a sweet or #blessed tale.
Matrix
Everyone’s raving about Matrix by Lauren Groff (I mean, this book sure roared in with a bang, right?), and here I am googling “psychology of preference” and scouring an old NPR transcript of an interview with Ira Flatow, Yale professor of psychology and author of How Pleasure Works. (In other words, why we like certain things.)
Harlem Shuffle and Real Estate
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead is a heist novel. But heist stories are not my thing, so I’m billing this as a novel about real estate. Because it partly is. And because I read it in tandem with Real Estate, the third installment of Deborah Levy’s “A Living Autobiography” series.
A Long Petal of the Sea
Once again, another wonderful book club meeting with alumnae from my high school. This time, we ranged from the Classes of 1948 to 2004. (I think I got that right.)
The Wolf Border and The Electric Michelangelo
Two totally different novels by the same author. One about wolves, one about tattoos. (Duh, of course I’m simplifying.) Highly recommend both, but for some reason Wolves > Tattoos for me?
