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.
The Editor, Having and Being Had, Slow Productivity, The Work of Art
Here’s Part 2 (of 4?) of a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read lately. Some of these I’ve read with an eye toward my own writing (style, subject, etc.), some were just for fun.
The Women Behind the Door
Sometimes I feel like I grew up as a reader in tandem with Roddy Doyle’s journey as a writer. In college, my parents gave me Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Doyle’s 1993 Booker-winning novel. I was mesmerized by the cover and even more mesmerized by the dialogue (some of which was hard for me to decipher).
Reading Our Way to Better Taste
From Newsletter Issue No. 19:
In July, the New York Times published a comprehensive roundup of “The Best Books of the First Quarter of the 21st Century.” How were these titles agreed upon? Well, they were “voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, critics and other book lovers — with a little help from the staff of The New York Times Book Review.
The Safekeep
People will say The Safekeep is a love story, or people will say The Safekeep is about how WWII affected a country, but the magic of Yael van der Wouden’s debut is a house and how a structure’s story changes depending on who occupies it. A structure will always = shelter, but is this shelter fair, just, or healthy? “Bound to this house, he said. As if it was a tether and not a shelter.”
Ghost Wall
“Packs a punch.” “Good things come in small packages.” “Punches above its weight.” (Weird how ‘punch’ does double time when it comes to idioms about outsize force relative to size…guess we really do think of impact vis a vis mass?) Those are a handful of annoying phrases that one could use to describe a “small but mighty” (ugh) book. “Slim.” “Compact.” “Trim.” “Slender.” All ways that short novels are described. (No shame there — I’ve used them all.)
Creation Lake
It’s like when you’re sitting in a window-filled room and the clouds start moving juuust a smidge so that when the sunlight peeks and then recedes you nonetheless feel your entire mood fluctuate with these subtlest of shifts. Quietly provocative.
Love and Trouble, Monsters, House Lessons, The American Idea of Home
I’ve been meaning to do a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read in the last few months. Some of these books were read with the intent of observing format and style for my own writing, but the subject matter is fascinating too. So, win-win. (I mean, could you have an interestingly written book about something boring? Of course. But it wouldn’t come across as boring. Therein lies the quandary…)
The Buddha in the Attic
I’m sure you know about author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s wildly popular 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.”
RAWTS: The Nix
I shared this a few weeks ago in stories, but it needs to be here on the grid. Matt is back. Meaning, he’s back in his Reader Era. Figured today — our 24th anniversary — was as perfect a time as any to post.
Liars
Liars is about a long-in-tooth marriage that becomes that way ostensibly because the husband is a jackass. And he absolutely is. John is first and foremost a liar, and having observed similar nasty situations over the years, I have to say that Sarah Manguso’s illustration of John is pitch-perfect. (It’s like these things … follow a pattern or something?!) I feel like critics/reviewers and maybe even Manguso herself want readers to then question whether or not the wife, Jane, is a liar as well — “unreliable narrator” and all that. That’s fair, and maybe she really is lying to herself sometimes. (We all do on occasion, yes?)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Today I found myself perusing a Reddit thread about learning to weave, which…YOLO! (Yes, I have a weird desire to learn to weave. Weave what? Idk. But I loved bringing home a loom from Blue Birds when I was a kid, and for several months I’ve been wanting to learn a hands-on hobby to tap into a different part of the creative brain.)
Practice
What is it like to go through one’s day without analyzing every facet of one’s most basic routine? Darned if I know… (🫥)
Shark Heart
Amy to Matt: “I’m thinking of this post and I’m starting it with how I think about death on occasion. Well, actually, a fair amount. Is that a weird and/or concerning thing to share?”
Matt to Amy: “Uh, yes. Are you catastrophizing?”
A: “No, not really. Well, don’t you think about what happens? Like, is a soul something that lives on? Does a ‘being’ really just ‘disappear’? That sort of thing. I thought everyone ponders these ideas.”
M: “No, I do not ponder that.”
Absolution
“It’s all about value assigned.” This was the key line, for me, in Alice McDermott’s latest, Absolution. Interestingly, I had been sort of turning over this idea of “value” that we assign to things even before reading that line. Said another way: “What’s the point?”
Clear
The stories we make up about others, about circumstances, about ourselves, even, when we are in need of connection and comfort. That is, in sum, what Clear by Carys Davies is about.
Summerwater
I know everyone loves a gratitude journal. That’s great and all, but a gratitude journal doesn’t really do much for me. (Don’t misunderstand: I try to “practice gratitude” on the regular and of course am thankful for many, many things…I’m not a sociopathic lunatic, ok?)
Instead, at different points in my life, I’ve kept what I guess I’d call a “surprise journal.” (Can a stationery company please design an official version with that “surprise, surprise” lady on the cover?)
Behind the Moon
There was a tidbit on a recent This American Life episode (the one titled “Lists!!!”) that described all the lists this woman keeps on her phone. They were more than the usual to-do lists that we probably all have. Instead, one of her ongoing lists was something along the lines of “Things I Do That are Off-Brand for Me.” It made me laugh. Partly because this was a much younger — and much more unattached — person than I and one of her “off brand” items was that she hadn’t kissed anyone famous. We like collecting good questions — ones that are fun to pull out with friends that might illuminate something we might not know about each other — and this is one we’ll add to the arsenal for sure because it raises some good sub-questions such as: Do I *have* a “brand”? But also, finding something off-brand about oneself is actually kind of hard! (We did finally come up with some tepid answers.)
The Alternatives
There’s a fine line between technology & tool — at least when it comes to casual parlance. I mean, yes, people will talk about personal technology as a “tool,” but I don’t think many of us think about, say, a hammer as “technology.” In grad school, I had to read Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford. I remember it being mind-expanding because although it was published in 1934, Technics and Civilization had a lot to say about “technology” — meaning everything from a clock (sundial, really) to electricity — and how humans use them…and for what outcome. For reference, this was in a Communications and Media Studies discipline so the lesson here is that all these tools were actually technologies that helped shaped our world. (In other words, “technology” doesn’t have to involve the internet.)
Wandering Stars
“I think most sequels are bad.” This is what a character in Tommy Orange’s new novel, Wandering Stars, says. This character — like other characters in the second half of this book — was originally introduced to readers in Orange’s much-lauded debut, There There. So that’s kind of interesting since Wandering Stars is a sequel of sorts. But Wandering Stars is also a prequel in that we get three generations of history — and “explanation,” if you will — of these characters in the first half of Orange’s second novel. On a surface level, this is Orange’s attempt at making sense of addiction and why some people might fall under its curse. But specifically, he’s tracing a trail from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to a family of “urban Indians” in Oakland. He is offering up detailed origin stories for Jacquie, Orvil, Opal, as well as Loother and Lony — all from There There.
Life’s a Journey
From Newsletter Issue No. 18:
In 1985, a movie called The Journey of Natty Gann debuted, and I thought it was the Greatest Thing Ever. I even wrote about it in the journal my teacher required us to keep. (That said, I think on this particular day all I wrote is “I watched a movie called The Journey of Natty Gann.”) It turns out that John Cusack was in it, but my fourth-grade self had no idea who he was or that he was on his way to being iconic Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything. I saw it with my mom in a theater in Seattle’s Southcenter mall, which was nowhere near our home, so the only thing I can think of is that we saw it en route to or from my grandparents’ house. Ergo, it truly felt like a proper “outing” — maybe we were doing some back-to-school shopping. I have a vague recollection of being in a fussy mood (not uncommon in that era, I’m sorry to say, especially when it came to clothing), but the film calmed me. Call it my journey from brat (Bratty Gann?!) to curious 9-year-old film connoisseur.
