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 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.
Want
This year I tried to tussle with my “I don’t like it, but maybe I like it” stance toward “popular books.” (In fact, I’m currently writing a blog post about The Vanishing Half [very popular] and The Glass Hotel [normal, somewhat understated popular].) Want by Lynn Steger Strong – which, by the way, was named a top book of 2020 by NPR and was also included in The New Yorker’s ‘Best Books We Read in 2020’ [but does that mean it’s ‘popular’?] – provides an excellent framework for this loop-de-loop thinking.
