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.
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.
Moon Tiger
Once in a while, I’ll come across a video of an over-the-top church service. The latest is a pastor making his “stage entrance” via makeshift rollercoaster. Okaaay! Welcome to the commodification of something sacred. “Commodifying” something is maybe just another way of saying “treating as a finite good” or perhaps “cheapening something into a more digestible state.”
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. …
Stone Yard Devotional
“Human beings need recognition as much as they need food and water. No crueler punishment can be devised than to not see someone, to render them unimportant or invisible. ‘The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,’ George Bernard Shaw wrote, ‘but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.’ To do that is to say: You don’t matter. You don’t exist.” This is from David Brooks’ book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Whether or not you like Brooks, it’s fair to say he can address a topic with ease and clarity; I found this one — which zeros in on something I think about quite often — an excellent read.
But what happens when someone seems to be actively eschewing being known? Or, how about this: What if by hiding oneself away a person may actually be more known? Does visibility = being “known”? Or is it something more? …
The Fell
There’s a difference between isolation, “alone time,” and loneliness. Maybe they intersect a bit, but the distinct ways that we experience — and perhaps sometimes crave — solitude don’t really share qualities, beyond the obvious granular one, with each other.
Dayswork
Some real literary figures feature in Dayswork, a novel by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel (who are married to each other). Namely, Herman Melville, but also Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Lowell, literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick, and the still-living and Pulitzer-winning Melville biographer Hershel Parker (thinly veiled as “The Biographer”). They aren’t characters, exactly, as they play the historical figures that they actually are only through the lens of the protagonist’s internet deep dive as she becomes obsessed with Melville during the early days of the pandemic — that time when we were all sequestered inside with our computers as our only tethers to the outside world.
A Gate at the Stairs
I’ve finished this book and it nonetheless remains a mystery to me — and that is probably why I love it so, so much.
RAWTS: Amy’s Take on The Nix
My husband and I read a book together. (Wow, cool, cue massive applause.) This is of interest because Matt is pretty much a self-professed non-reader of books. But back in 2020, he declared he wanted to read an “Amy book” with me. It was awesome, and we read The Overstory by Richard Powers. Fast forward to 2024, and I said, “Let’s do that again!” I had started The Nix and was enjoying the breezy style. So I declared it so.
RAWTS: Matt’s Take on The Nix
From Matt:
My boss at a college internship thought I was funny, and remarked that I should try standup comedy. I’m glad my ego didn’t take the bait. I’m the worst storyteller. Since then though, I’ve thought about how fun it would be if I were to jot down comical scenarios & observations that I’ve come across over the years in a notepad. I could workshop them with Amy, and have multiple hilarious bits at the ready when hanging with friends, or maybe even, one day, on stage. I never did that.
They Came Like Swallows
The blurb for or any quick synopsis of They Came Like Swallows — a tender book (almost, maybe, perhaps a novella?) by William Maxwell and first published in 1937 — will focus on Elizabeth (or Bess to her sister) as mother and wife and how her two sons, husband, and other family members and neighbors view her as “goodness” personified. That is true, and it’s a beautifully executed portrait of the nuances found in each of these relationships. The 1918 influenza informs the context. (So that feels kind of close, particularly when a character gripes about closed schools and churches.) …
Benediction
More books like this — like Benediction, by Kent Haruf — please.
More books that:
* Rely on simplicity to convey complexity;
* Demonstrate the intricate connections and bonds that cause people to either lean toward each other or — at their worst — fractiously repel one another;
* Embody, well, embodiment. (I think “embody” is such an interesting word, just as I think “incorporate” is a fascinating word. What does it mean to have life’s truths played out via our physical bodies, our corporal selves?)
Connected. Curious. Good.
From Newsletter Issue No. 20:
“Reading deepens. Social media keeps you where you are. Reading makes your mind do work. You have to follow the plot, imagine what the ballroom looked like, figure the motivations of the characters—I understand what Gatsby wants! All this makes your brain and soul develop the habit of generous and imaginative thinking. Social media is passive. The pictures, reels and comments demand nothing, develop nothing. They give you sensations, but the sensations never get deeper. Social media gets you stuck in you. Reading is a rocket ship, new worlds.” — Peggy Noonan
Stay True, Between Two Kingdoms, Group Living, American Bulk
Here’s Part 3 (of 4?) of a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read lately. Some of these I’ve read with an eye toward my own writing (style, subject, etc.), some were just for fun.
Same As It Ever Was
Something that I don’t think is talked about enough is the role of “admiration” in relationships. Often — if not always — the people we feel the most drawn to, the people who become the closest of friends, the people that we just feel good around … possess qualities that we admire and that we want to (even if just on a small level) try to emulate and replicate. Not in a creepy SWF stalker way, but in a gently magnetic way.
Pearl
I finished Siân Hughes’ Booker long-listed debut novel early this morning after getting about 3 hours of sleep (oy), and the slog sped up and her vision became clear.
Scaffolding
I wanted to say that this book hurt my feelings, with (what I thought was) that Nora Ephron phrase in mind. But actually, it turns out that the Nora Ephron book I was thinking about is called I Feel Bad About My Neck (and not something like My Neck Hurt My Feelings), so maybe I should say that I Feel Bad About This Book. I know that this is just a matter of preference because this is how I felt while living in Brooklyn.
Colored Television
There’s a lot in this book that touched a nerve for me (namely, bouncing around rentals with young children due to affordability and/or landlord nastiness…been there, done that in NYC and Dublin) and there’s a lot that may touch a nerve for others that I can’t necessarily relate to (navigating different cultures as a biracial person)…
Playground
I was a pool rat when I was a kid, and each decade since childhood, I’ve faithfully returned to the water — albeit often with yearrrrrs in between. Each reinstallation of the Swimming Routine summons (faux) existential angst about things like buying a new lock, new cap, new goggles; understanding the ins and outs of the location (like the time I was convinced I was “locked out” of the pool but it was just that I was a whole hour early for open swim…cue me banging on the door like a lunatic until I just decided to sit in the sauna 🫠🥵), wondering if muscle memory will take over. (It always does.)
