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.
Departure(s)
When it comes to the snooze button (which, have you noticed, is ginormous on the most updated iPhone OS?), here is my philosophy, at least with my own snooze button activity: The point is not so much to get more sleep; the point is to have an awareness that I am getting more sleep. I think that fundamentally, humans want to actively know that they are receiving or experiencing a benefit. Is being granted a bit of extra sleep without being alerted to it the same as actively choosing to get that extra time? I don’t think so. (Stay tuned for my exhilarating dispatches on my philosophy of laundry.)
Unlikely Animals
I didn’t know that Annie Hartnett was a philosophy major, but I learned that after reading her bio today.
The Ten Year Affair
The Guardian recently published a piece about tropes. You know, the prescribed templates that are staples of romance, a genre I don’t read but I’m clued in enough to understand the gist.
Trust Exercise
When I interviewed my niece for my homesick project, I asked her what homesickness feels like. Among other things, I loved that she very specifically said, “I feel it in my sternum.” Because there’s a real physicality to emotion, right? See: pit in stomach, butterflies in chest, etc.
The Material
A+++ and 100% to this clever and skewering novel about a Stand-Up MFA program. (Haha)
Near Flesh
What does it mean to have something published posthumously? (I mean, I know what it means, but what does it MEAN. [Know what I mean?])
We Do Not Part
We Do Not Part: A fixation on hands and touch and how we can mend and create but also pierce and cut … and maybe, too, a declaration that idleness (“idle hands” and all that) can prevent something from being revealed.
Three Days in June
Curling up in stripy pajamas and polka dot socks to finish the Anne Tyler book that you started on the plane home the other day and soaking in the simple (but not, like, “simple” as in one-dimensional) stories of normal people who Tyler has made up (of course…because it’s fiction) but nonetheless…
Imaginary Museums
This is Shel Silverstein for adults. But not like “for adults” with an “only” tagged at the end.
Great Expectations
“It’s never good to be a fanatic,” said my teacher. I have no recollection of the context; pretty sure she was directing us in a Gilbert & Sullivan production, so maybe she didn’t want us to get fanatical about gondoliers.
Heart Be at Peace
I’ve been thinking about what it means to not just live — but to cultivate, and maybe even cultivate with aplomb (!) — a small life. Which mine is. And I suspect that applies to the great majority of us.
The Emperor of Gladness
I suppose the main thing I took away from The Emperor of Gladness — Ocean Vuong’s second novel, the one that Oprah selected for her book club — is that sometimes the people we are meant to be the closest to are actually the farthest from us.
Orbital
Something I think about — way too much probably — is whether or not it is possible to live in a vacuum. (Not saying I want to! Just that I find it sort of fascinating, speaking as someone who has lived in many different places.) How much, and to what degree, do our contexts and cultures influence the core of our beings?
So Far Gone
We saw The Head and the Heart last week. (Awesome show!) They didn’t play one of my favorites, and I can see it being a bit maudlin for a concert at an outdoor amphitheater anyway. It’s called “One Big Mystery” and is marked with “life’s one big mystery” as a repeated line. Simple stuff, but a true statement nonetheless.
Twist
My first job at a magazine included tasks like fact checking, proofing, as well as administrative minutiae such as taping an assortment of an editor’s handwritten taxi receipts to paper so that I could photocopy this collated masterpiece and then FAX it to someone in “corporate.” (🎶 It was the 90s. 🎶)
The Expert of Subtle Revisions
Do you *exist* if no one knows about you? Well, of course you do; this “tree falls in the woods” thought experiment doesn’t really hold up because — at minimum — the vast majority of us are “known” to the government or whatever else powers-that-be by virtue of having an ID, property record/lease, an internet connection, etc. But of course “knowing about you” the way that I mean isn’t about facts necessarily. It’s about feeling. And I just finished The Good Life, the book that outlines and gives insight into the Harvard Study of Adult Development, i.e. “the world’s longest scientific study of happiness.”
The Life of the Mind
While I’m not necessarily convinced of the benefits [for me] of reading a novel that stars a thoughtful protagonist who has a hard time shaking her neuroses because she possesses the kind of mind that seeks “deep” over “simple” and therefore forces her to analyze situations to an agonizingly detailed degree … I know that I sincerely can’t quit ‘em.
Real Americans
A question after reading Real Americans by Rachel Khong: How often do you suspend disbelief while reading fiction? I don’t mean like “this guy is driving around with his zombie ex-girlfriend” (yes, I’m referring to I Am Homeless if This is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore) or “these sea creatures are talking” (Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, which I have not read yet, but would like to). Those novels are considered literary fiction — not sci-fi — so readers accept the impossible as sort of an artistic method (maybe akin to Picasso’s portraits?) instead of world-building fantasy. No, I guess I mean more like a novel that is trying to be realistic, but instead feels a tiny bit like a sitcom when it comes to the neatly tied-together details.
All Fours
All Fours by Miranda July: I met with 4 friends to talk about this one the other week. Was it a book club? I guess — we were meeting to discuss a book. There did happen to be wine + cheese (+ Amelie’s macarons thanks to @librarian.in.the.woods). We were all women. But somehow it felt different than what popular culture thinks of as a book club. This open group — not everyone knew each other — was an outgrowth of the trio that met at my place a couple of months ago with History of the Rain (Niall Williams) as our catalyst.
A Parlor Read
Have you noticed publications (Atlantic, NYT) touting the benefits of reading aloud? I’ve enjoyed seeing these headlines because the first community literary event I produced in 2019 was just that: a read-aloud. It was called Book Covers (like a cover band, but “cover readers”), and there was a theme and a panel discussion following the readings — which were done by prominent community members and authors — + a run sheet + a sound system + press releases etcetcetc.
