“Then she leaned over and bit him hard on the cheek.”

August 31, 2023

Even though this biography of novelist Barbara Pym was picked as a “Best Book of the Year 2021” by the London Times, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph, I was initially reluctant to read it. I didn’t want to learn things that would make me … Read More

“I expect you to beat the odds. That’s my gift to you, in fact, that gift of expectations.”

August 17, 2023

At the end of this novel, Peter Sullivan tells the hard-scrabble students in his English class that he believes in them and expects them to succeed, even if no one else has ever had faith in them before. What a wonderful gift! In fact, in the … Read More

“I have learned,” said the Philosopher, “that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart knows to-day, the head will understand to-morrow.”

August 4, 2023

Interesting ideas sparkle throughout this novel. Here are two examples: “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will” and “…for life may not be consecutive, but explosive and variable, else it is a shackled and timorous slave.” It was written a hundred years ago by … Read More

“You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully.”

July 27, 2023

The last word of this sentence stunned me. The Annie Dillard I know is one of the boldest writers. Could she experience fear when writing? She does. She says, “In your humility, you lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles.” Then, she looks for … Read More

“Fiction . . . is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web . . .”

July 20, 2023

Virginia Woolf continues, “attached ever so lightly, perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves.” It’s only when the web is torn in the middle, says Woolf,  that … Read More

“It’s quite therapeutic going through the archives.”

July 11, 2023

Some memoirists want to record their history, others wish to tell great stories, and others, like Pamela Anderson, want to make sense of their lives. She is more interested in exploring “Who am I – when I’m alone?” than in the events that made headlines. She looks … Read More

“When I wrote my book ‘On Writing Well,’ I had a definite model in mind. . . it was Alec Wilder’s book about music.”

June 30, 2023

A veteran of WWII, William Zinsser was one of the first to give American writers advice that might be described as “touchy-feely.” In his classic On Writing Well, he says that he is most “interested in the intangibles that produce good writing – confidence, enjoyment, … Read More

“Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side.”

June 22, 2023

We are 500 pages into the story when this observation about the ideal structure for stories appears: “Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities….but at some untold … Read More

“Twelve years after Robin’s death, no one knew any more about how he had ended up hanged from a tree in his own yard than they had on the day it happened.”

June 13, 2023

Even though I am not normally drawn to murder mysteries, I read this novel because Donna Tartt demonstrates how a writer can successfully break the rules. None of her characters are likeable; instead, they are suffering, or damaged, or limited, or all three. The plot does not … Read More

“I am going to write about all this one day, I told her, and she smiled at me.”

May 30, 2023

This is the final sentence of Hua Hsu’s memoir. He is thanking his therapist for helping him deal with the death of his best friend. I imagine his therapist smiled because she knew that writing a memoir based on trauma is difficult. In fact, Hsu spent … Read More

“Even as I write these words I am planning to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.”

May 23, 2023

We all know the feeling of being torn between wanting to take the time to think deeply and needing to get up to get something done. The tension between lofty ideas and everyday practicalities is a theme that runs through many of the works in this collection. … Read More

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice –”

May 16, 2023

Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” continues, “though the whole house / began to tremble / and you felt the old tug / at your ankles . . .” The journey she describes didn’t stop, even though it was “a wild night.” The stars began “to burn … Read More

“Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance . . .”

April 27, 2023

William Zinsser continues, “. . .not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” Zinsser reminds us that readers don’t want to be impressed by your accomplishments. They don’t want to see whining, anger, or revenge. … Read More

“I can allow myself to speculate on all that now, though it would not have occurred to me to do so at the time.”

April 20, 2023

When writing about something that happened years ago, should you stick to the story, or should you interject speculations about what could have happened? Should you also comment on your speculations? People who write stories about things that happened to them regularly consider these questions. Pulitzer Prize … Read More

“Go north a dozen years on a road overgrown with vines to find the days after you were born.”

April 13, 2023

This remarkable first line of the poem “Sight” by Faith Shearin does three things: it provides a way to visualize a journey back in time along “a road overgrown with vines.” It includes an interesting slant rhyme with “vines” and “find.” And, it’s written as a command, … Read More