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.
Lessons in Chemistry and Easy Beauty
Everyone loves Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. What’s not to like? It’s entertaining, it’s charming with brisk storytelling, it addresses important topics. It’s pretty heavy-handed in that regard, but I wonder if that’s partly Garmus’ point since the characters’ one-dimensionality must be intentional. (I really do believe this has to be a stylistic choice on the author’s part.) I decided to read it sort of like a fable. Like how I think La La Land is a fable. (I am a huge La La Land fan! I wrote about it together with Milkman by Anna Burns back in 2019.)
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.
Measuring Up
About a year ago, my brother-in-law posed a question on Facebook: “Comedians judge each other by The Aristocrats joke. My dad judges chefs by their chicken parm. What unique yardsticks do you have?” In other words, by what metric do you judge something specific? I responded that despite the cliché, I do, in fact, judge a book by its cover. Incidentally, that’s how I ended up purchasing Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi. I’ll readily admit that if a book’s cover doesn’t register aesthetically for me, I’ll have to be convinced about its content. The converse, of course, is that I’ve been burned a time or two by books whose innards don’t match their eye-catching exteriors. By the way, I’m not alone in this fascination: Here’s a piece from The New Yorker about the ins and outs of cover design.
