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 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.”
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’m a Reader: Here’s My Response
From Newsletter Issue No. 14:
The other day, I came across a draft of my thesis for my masters program. I have a MA in Media Studies, and in 2003 — just a few months before I had my first child (timing is everything!) — I completed an ethnography of a group of children of immigration in one neighborhood in Charlotte, NC and how their media preferences were shaped. Because of guidance from my advisor, I used a framework from a book called Is There a Text in This Class? by the scholar Stanley Fish as a way to frame my own work. In academic circles, Fish is known as one of the main proponents of something called Reader-Response Criticism. The Cliff Notes version of RRC is that the main lens through which to view literature is the reader and his or her experience as opposed focusing on the author. In the introduction to Is There a Text in This Class? Fish writes…
I Have Some Questions for You
The second season of The White Lotus created so much buzz late last year, yet nothing I read seemed to point to how the entire show was underpinned by themes of “gaslighting” — how others convince us something is true and maybe more importantly, how we convince ourselves that something is true. (Maybe this analysis is out there and I missed it?) Characters continually wonder: Is my partner having an affair? Is this person attracted to me? And — zinger — is this cabal of “high-class gays” (to borrow Tanya’s phrasing) trying to kill me? Or…does the “evidence” just overwhelmingly tell me so, ergo it’s true? I thought this last season was brilliant.
My Top 12 of 2018 aka How to Set Some Reading Goals
The major publications have already released their “best of” book lists for the year. But nope, at A Lifely Read, I like to push it to the very, very end. Major newspapers/magazines/websites have a reason for pushing their lists a bit early: No new books are being released at the end of the year and publishers want people to buy books for the holidays. (Did you see the article about printing issues that “derailed” holiday book sales?)
