"Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." — Stephen King
January 16, 2014
I have been drawn to this book by Annie Dillard many times, and I continue to appreciate the ideas and the poetic quality of the prose. My favorite chapter is “Seeing.” For her, seeing leads to understanding, which then leads to transformation. Her closing lines describe being … Read More
January 9, 2014
If you read only one poem today (or this week, or this month), let it be “Ancestral Lights” by Deborah Digges. Here is more of the sentence that the quotation comes from: “And though I know now that heaven may be only the mind’s … Read More
January 2, 2014
My favorite book of 2013 is about three grown-up siblings and their families, all of whom have one important thing in common: they aren’t where they wanted to be. They don’t feel at home in the choices that they’ve made. What’s remarkable about this novel is the … Read More
December 26, 2013
What kind of reader are you? Anne Fadiman gives a book-length answer to that question in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader. She tells stories about her passion for reading books. For example, she describes the thrill of going to a place that a book … Read More
December 12, 2013
This novel is a collection of beautiful sentences about self-discovery. For example: “It was during these days that I first began to feel fissures opening in my soul, wounds of the sort that plunge some men into a deep, dark, lifelong loneliness for which there is no … Read More
December 5, 2013
John Dewey, one of my heroes, said that you don’t learn from experience — you learn from thinking about your experience. That’s the idea that What Our Stories Teach Us is based on. Linda K. Shadiow outlines a three-step process of description, interpretation, and analysis. Is this … Read More
November 28, 2013
Today, Thanksgiving Day, should not end before we think about the writers who have changed us. For me, the one who floats to the top this year is Mary Oliver. It’s hard not to say “wow” after reading a poem like “Wild Geese” . You might … Read More
November 21, 2013
When Jun Do was a child living in an orphanage in North Korea, one of his responsibilities was to decide which of his peers would be punished. That was just the beginning. As an adult, he was often in the impossible position of trying to let the … Read More
November 14, 2013
This poem about tension and transition is classic Rainer Marie Rilke. He explored both of these dynamics frequently in a his letters, which were published in a book titled Letters to a Young Poet. (They are among the most famous, best -loved letters in all of … Read More
November 7, 2013
Looking for a simple explanation for why some people are introverts and others are extroverts? Then don’t read Susan Cain’s book Quiet. Her explanation has not one, not two, not three, but four factors: our inborn temperament, environment, free will, and how these interact at any … Read More
October 24, 2013
This is the opening line of a poem written by the revolutionary William Wordsworth in 1804. He shook things up by experimenting with “real language” (as opposed to the formal style found in serious writing), and he wrote about feelings (as opposed to intellectual matters). This line … Read More
October 18, 2013
Albert Einstein wrote that the separation between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. This idea is at play in Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. The narrator is an old woman who looks back and concludes that she … Read More
