“No other river in the world can match the Danube for the sheer historical richness of the cities and landscapes through which it passes.”

July 5, 2018

As an American, I haven’t thought much about the many roles that rivers have played in other parts of the world.  In The Danube: A Cultural History, Andrew Beattie argues convincingly that when travelling the Danube, you are taking not just a geographical journey, but a … Read More

“Constanze took to cutting his meat at table so he wouldn’t slice up his fingers.”

June 25, 2018

Mozart was famously fidgety – he constantly drummed his fingers and was unable to even wash his hands without pacing. Apparently, Mozart’s wife Constanze didn’t trust him with a knife because he was prone to injuring himself.  So, in addition to being one of the world’s greatest … Read More

“He felt as if he was never again going to know the reason for anything he did.”

June 19, 2018

Why read novels?  Jonathan Franzen argues in a Harper’s essay that people are drawn to strong fiction because they like to engage in complex stories that  don’t have simple resolutions. In Anne Tyler’s first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, the central character, a law student, … Read More

“I could feel nothing except the burden of my own life and the exhaustion, the apparent futility, of trying to sustain it.”

June 8, 2018

This week, the Centers for Disease Control released a report that said that suicide rates in the United States have risen nearly 30% since 1999. With the issue of mental health in the news so frequently lately, I am looking for guidance from Parker Palmer’s essays on … Read More

“The failure was flooded with genius.”

June 1, 2018

This book focuses on one remarkable ten-month period when some of the most interesting people in the world – Sigmund Freud, Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Gustav Klimt – lived in Vienna, which had one of the highest suicide rates in Europe. Why did so many … Read More

“My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.”

May 26, 2018

Who would you like to begin your summer with?  This year, I choose Henry David Thoreau. His essay “Walking” celebrates the art of meandering, sauntering and getting lost in fields and woods. He is drawn to the forest, the meadow and “the night in which the … Read More

“But what could possibly go wrong?”

May 18, 2018

Think of the funniest books you’ve ever read.  Did any of them win literary awards?  No?  As the Washington Post points out, there has long been a “critical resistance to comic novels.” Until now. The 2018 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to the laugh-out-loud novel Less by… Read More

“I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak – to be company.”

May 9, 2018

The school year is drawing to a close now, and so for me it’s time to revisit my goals and consider the extent to which we met them.  On the top of my list is the wish that students will see literature not as documents but as … Read More

“I want to be alone, but not too alone.”

May 3, 2018

I disagree with the description on the back of this book, which says that one of Jonathan Franzen’s “essential themes” is “the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America.” Rather, it seems to me that in every one of these essays, the narrator discovers that … Read More

“All I have told is true but it is not the whole truth.”

April 26, 2018

This is how Laura Ingalls Wilder described her Little House books in a speech in 1937. As it turns out, the “whole truth” was stranger than fiction in many ways. In Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Caroline Fraser tells a story that is … Read More

“You want to aim for what D’Mello and colleagues call a ‘zone of optimal confusion.’”

April 19, 2018

D’Mello and his research team identified three guiding principles for implementing confusion in the college classroom: it should be appropriate, intentional and in the context of learning; students should possess the ability to successfully resolve the confusion; and when students can’t resolve it on their own, there … Read More

“You’re not going to be able to deal with this problem alone.”

April 12, 2018

The most radical idea in Johann Hari’s Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions is that treatment for depression shouldn’t focus on medication only.  Because depression has three kinds of causes – biological, psychological and social – treatment plans should include … Read More

“Without my voice, and spirit, I am dust, / This is not what I want, but what I must.”

April 7, 2018

In these memorable lines from Mike Bartlett’s play King Charles III, the lead character explains his decision to oppose a law the parliament has passed. He knows his actions will throw the modern British system of government into chaos. People will revolt, and tanks will … Read More

“The sentences would be like bright juggler’s balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again.”

March 29, 2018

Or so Rhoda – the aunt in Barbara Pym’s Less Than Angels — thought would happen when “clever” people came to visit the family.  Instead, however, she found that the visitors’ sentences could be compared to “scrubbing-brushes, dish cloths, knives” which sometimes “fell to the ground … Read More

“While learning requires much effort, teaching entails an even greater one because it is more laden with moral and human responsibilities.”

March 22, 2018

Really?  Moral and human responsibilities? Let’s think about that for a moment.  Could it be the case that the teacher’s real work is to “animate inert knowledge with qualities of our own personality and spirit”? Is it our job to “fill and enlarge the character and spirit… Read More