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.
Beautiful Ruins
I read a lot of Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter while in Italy — and even had it in my backpack during our day in Cinque Terre, where a lot of the novel takes place. (Why I didn’t pull it out and take some cool meta pic with the book in the foreground is beyond me…) I think a lot about buildings and structures that endure — maybe especially when they’re perched on a tenuous-looking precipice? — and I love ruminating on the repurposing of spaces. Case in point: Giunti Odeon, a former Renaissance palace in Florence that now houses a café/bookstore/cinema. …
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.”
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.”
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?
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.
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.
