"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." — Stephen King
October 16, 2014
What happens when a novel begins in the middle of the story? There is a certain awkwardness. You can anticipate that there will be a lot of skipping around, which requires concentration. Is it worth it? In the case of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, the … Read More
October 9, 2014
It’s hard to over-state how highly Robert Burns is revered by people from Scotland. In 2009, this 18th century poet was voted “the greatest Scot” by viewers of a Scottish television station. Every year on January 25th, Scots from around the world meet to recite the poem … Read More
October 2, 2014
In this 1938 book about educational theory, John Dewey continues: “But they are periods of genuine reflection only when they follow after times of more overt action and are used to organize what has been gained . . .” He famously observed that you don’t learn from … Read More
September 25, 2014
Mark Haddon’s extraordinary novel The Red House appears to be built on the ideas and style of the essays written by Michel de Montaigne in the 1500s, and I can’t think of a better, more inventive, choice. As we see with the “double within ourselves” line, he … Read More
September 18, 2014
The poem continues: “. . . only hum some low green note, roll their pinecones down the empty streets and blame it, with a shrug, on the cold wind. During the day they sleep inside their furry bark, clouds shredding like ancient lace above their crowns.” These … Read More
September 11, 2014
This is not a book for readers who hate getting lost when a scene on page 105 doesn’t get resolved until page 340. It is for readers who would like to see how a literary genius describes the challenges and boredom of a normal life. The story’s … Read More
September 4, 2014
Novelists make assumptions about their readers’ interest in technical details, whether they’re writing about sabotage, romance or philosophy. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is written by a philosophy professor who assumes we want to know the technical details of her two main character’s struggle to find a … Read More
August 28, 2014
. . . and spill gold over things that tell us who we are.” This is from “Learning the Language” by Henry Taylor. It’s a beautifully constructed poem that follows strict rules of rhyme and meter. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, his love … Read More
August 21, 2014
In the tenth anniversary edition of the memoir The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr writes, “Just as the novel form once took up experiences of urban industrialized society that weren’t being addressed in sermons or epistles or epic poems, so memoir — with its single, intensely personal … Read More
August 14, 2014
When Pride and Prejudice turned 200 years old last year, the Guardian ran a wonderful collection of short pieces about the main characters by a variety of writers, who said the sorts of thing that literary people say when they are out partying: Mr. Bennett is a … Read More
August 7, 2014
“Danger” might not be the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Robert Frost. And yet, look at what he says in this article: “If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole word, then it isn’t worth anything. Young poets forget that poetry must include … Read More
July 31, 2014
What should the first sentence in a great novel do? Set the tone, establish the location and perhaps introduce the main character? The first sentence in Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout does more than that. It gives us the dying river image, which prepares us … Read More
July 22, 2014
This comes from a speech by John F. Kennedy that pays tribute to Robert Frost. He said, “When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his … Read More
July 17, 2014
Are poems tools? The 90 contributors to this book think so. They describe how specific poems have helped them. For example, our line this week, from the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, was submitted by a teacher who has those words tattooed on her leg. … Read More
July 10, 2014
Oh, how I love an unreliable narrator! Our quote is the first sentence of the novel, and it’s clearly a flat-out lie. (The strangest thing about anyone’s return from the dead is that it happened — of course people thought it’s strange.) So, if the main character … Read More