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.
Kantika
I’ve always been fascinated by my family’s history — the lore, the movement from one place to another, the individuals whose quirks (either good or bad) become mythologized in some broad-brush kind of way. There’s nothing particularly dramatic or unusual about my history, but family stories are usually the first kinds that we hear as a child, so we internalize and memorize them and grant them a bit of tidy morality lesson. Maybe you’re this way too?
North Woods
A bit of …
Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders);
The Overstory (Richard Powers);
Hamnet (Maggie O’Farrell);
Her Perfect Symmetry (Audrey Niffenegger);
Swann (Carol Shields)…
Let Us Descend
And this is why Oprah is the queen. I mean, Jesmyn Ward is the queen. But they’re both the queens for different, but linked, reasons.
The Caretaker
In 2019, I set out to read one Shakespeare play a month. It’s not that I’m a huge fan of the Bard (like, at all), but it had been a long time since I had immersed myself in literature that made me work the way that older literature demands. Untangling those assemblages of words kept me focused. It was a fun little undertaking…I may do something similar in 2024. (Suggestions?)
Wellness
I’ve been trying to think of how to describe books like Wellness by Nathan Hill. The first thing that comes to mind is that novels like this are ones that I “gobble up.” They are “smart” and “literary” and often on the longer side. But they aren’t overly taxing. They are generally page-turners, and sometimes you can skim a tiny bit in parts. There are dramatic inflection points, but you know that the author spent a lot of time trying to figure out where best to place them because often these novels involve time shifting. In general, these “gobble up” books span a few generations of a family’s history even if “family dynamics” is not the main focus of the plot. (Wellness is essentially a look at the psychology of love using a middle-aged marriage as its foil.) The authors’ ability to create spot-on characters drawing from contemporary tropes, nuances, and cultural references without stooping to stereotyping is A+. They’re just really, really well-written stories.
I Meant It Once
Anastasia Krupnik grew up and now she’s about 10 different characters experiencing a quarter-life crisis in I Meant it Once, the debut short story collection from Kate Doyle. I mean, not really (that would be fun, though!), but Doyle’s prose and the dialogue she gives her characters project the same sort of determination-tempered-with-a-large-dash-of-doubt that seems to always encumber our beloved Anastasia.
The Premonition
If you know me in person, have followed me for a bit, or know what I’ve been spending time writing about (homesickness), it will be no surprise why I adored The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto, published in 1988 in Japan and recently translated to English.
Salvage the Bones
Reading Salvage the Bones was like going back to high school. Indeed, a quick search shows me that it is, in fact, taught in secondary schools.
As soon as I hit my stride in the book — and learned the above — I wondered if the book had been challenged/banned. Another search shows me that I get to smugly say: KNEW IT. As a parent, I am truly, truly baffled by this. I would have loved for my kids to have read Salvage the Bones in high school. Here’s why…
The Wren, The Wren
R.E.M.’s album Green came out when I was in 7th grade — that was my “entry point” to the band. I nearly wore out my tape, lovingly dubbed by a friend, except there were all these whispers about it being a commercial sellout, but what did I know? I think it’s common to have a sweet affinity for the “thing” that introduces us to an artist, musician, writer. Often, we explore the back catalogue and then abhor anything that comes after our own particular entry point. It took me a long time to appreciate that Out of Time is, actually, a brilliant album. (Despite Shiny Happy People, which you know we all secretly love…)
Night Watch
With any crisis where one might feel somewhat removed, it takes a lot of self-imposed effort to (attempt to) understand what it’s really “like” to be in the center of it — whether that be due to time (a historical event) or location or any other seeming lack of connection with events. I find that bothersome (and I mean that about myself as well), but I suppose that’s human nature. We covet, crave, and glom on to what we know and what is familiar. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.
Old God’s Time
On the back of Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry’s 11th novel, a blurb by Robert Gottlieb reads, “Barry’s novels give us lives, not plots…Every one of his novels is luminous. Not one of them sounds like anyone else.” Yup, yup on that “lives, not plots” commentary — and actually, I wrote about this very idea many years ago for The Curator after reading my first Barry novel. (It was Annie Dunne, purchased at the Dublin Writers Museum … here’s the piece.) These days, I’m more often than not drawn to “plot-less” books — books that mine emotion and motivation instead of relying on “and here’s what happened next” storytelling. But, as laid bare in that essay, I initially found reading a novel like that kind of jarring.
All We Shall Know
I love Donal Ryan’s work and can’t wait to read his latest, The Queen of Dirt Island. I lived in Ireland when The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December were published, and these will always be among my favorite books partly for the reason that they will transport me back to a specific era, a specific setting, a specific feeling…always. To me, they beckon like a gentle call of “remember this?” even though the setting, place, and politics aren’t really mine to claim.
The Shadow King
I have a fascination with random photos and ephemera, even if (especially if?) I have no connection to the people or events documented. Some examples of accounts I follow: @dear.fran, @oldirelandincolour, @oldschoolmoms, @owasowfoundphotos, @savefamilyphotos, @classicmyerspark. What others choose to document or save interests me to no end.
I Am Homeless If This is Not My Home
When you read something that sounds an awful lot like something you’d actively avoid — man takes his dead ex-girlfriend (who is now a zombie of sorts?) on a long road trip — but it’s coming from someone like Lorrie Moore…
Machine Dreams
I’ve muddled through this novel — Machine Dreams, by Jayne Anne Phillips — for the past three or four weeks. It’s not the book’s fault; it’s just been a really busy three or four weeks what with moving our children back to school and then moving ourselves about 850 miles away. This is Phillips’ debut novel, and although I had never heard of Phillips until about two months ago, she was apparently once associated with “the girls of Knopf” or a female version of the “literary brat pack” which included excellent company: Lorrie Moore, Louise Erdrich, Mona Simpson.
The Sheltering Sky
This was a fascinating book. Paul Bowles was unknown to me until a couple of months ago, but as you can see from this cover image of his novel The Sheltering Sky, this is a 65th anniversary edition with “a new introduction by Tobias Wolff” as well as a blurb from Dave Eggers. The Sheltering Sky was initially published in 1949, but to me if felt very Hemingway-esque — probably because the plot centers around an affluent and aimless American couple that finds itself wandering Northern Africa after WWII.
The Autobiography of My Mother
What I kept thinking about while reading The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid was Sinéad O’Connor’s blockbuster album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. It’s a long and convoluted album name — I once had a dubbed tape of the album and I wish I remembered if the friend who gave it to me was even able to fit the whole title on the cassette cover’s spine. But I feel like it sums up this novel.
Mouthful of Birds
I admit I’ve grown a bit tired of people using the phrase “fever dream” to describe a book. Are we describing a rave, a haunted house, or what? Some phrases get thrown around so much and then become somewhat meaningless and amorphous. What do they really MEAN in real-life parlance? (Is this just my issue?)
The Sorrows of Others
Here’s an excellent short story collection about…
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
How do you put a pin on what one’s childhood is “like”? Similar to Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye or an Alice Munro story, or maybe Anne Enright’s novel What Are You Like?, this Lorrie Moore novel — Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, my first Lorrie Moore (!) — takes all those nebulous emotions that surface while reminiscing and somehow decorates them with prose that just seems to make sense.
