I was thrilled when Sere Prince Halverson, whose wonderful blog I’ve read for a long time, sent me an advance copy of her first novel. The Underside of Joy, which is available here, is a beautiful story about love in all its myriad shapes and about all the ways that people can be knotted together [...]
I read a lot this last week, aided by two very very very long travel days (for example, on 12/29 we left Jerusalem at 7pm ET and got home at 5pm ET). The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy – Priscilla Gilman (A gorgeously written story about love between a mother and child. Well, [...]
photo taken on Saturday late afternoon Last week my dear friend Annie and I were discussing books our daughters were reading. She asked me if I ever review kids’ books here. No, I said, though I do write the occasional review for Boston Mamas. Our conversation made me want to share some thoughts on reading, [...]
One of my favorite questions to ask others is “what are you reading?” I recently noted that one mark of a truly good friend, for me, is someone with whom I can exchange single-sentence emails that ask that one question. Over the summer I asked for, and received, many wonderful suggestions. I’ve written before about [...]
I picked up Learning to Breathe knowing I’d love it. The topic appealed to me: the author’s yearlong quest to bring calm to her life. Dani Shapiro, whose opinion I trust implicitly, both blurbed it and personally told me she thought I’d like it. The description of the author as someone with a “great life” [...]
Last summer, at BlogHer, I saw Stacy Morrison across the room. She was getting ready to sign copies of her new memoir, Falling Apart in One Piece. She looked happy, masterful, confident, and I remember thinking: she seems really cool. Little did I know. She is definitely cool! And I adored her memoir, Falling Apart [...]
I admit that I didn’t even know who Patti Smith was when I picked up her memoir Just Kids. Well, I did, but I was wrong: I thought she was the lead singer of the Pretenders. I had heard of Robert Mapplethorpe, though I didn’t know much beyond the controversy that I vaguely recall from [...]
As you know, I like to read. As you also know, the stack below my bedside table haunts me, reminding me that I will never, ever live as long as I need to read everything I want to read. Still I’m always adding to it. I find myself going through seasons with my reading, though [...]
I read Kyran Pittman’s lovely, funny, wise memoir, Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life, in a single day. I was smitten by page three: “‘Look at this,’ I’d say, holding up some fragment of everyday to myself and anyone who happened to be reading, turning it over this way and that. Look. People [...]
It is impossible to read Melissa Coleman’s beautiful memoir, This Life is in Your Hands, without thinking of Eden. In fact, knowing as we do from the beginning the tragedy on which the narrative hinges, the story is specifically haunted by thoughts of Paradise Lost. Coleman addresses these echoes head on in an episode about [...]
