A fabulous memoir by Isabel Allende. I read it a couple of years ago, but turned back to its pages last night for some reason. I won’t even attempt to say anything that Allende can’t say better herself. Some of my favorite passages:
Never do harm, and wherever possible do good.
All the air blew out of [...]
Today, Lift arrived. I pulled it out of its Amazon cardboard eagerly, turning the slender volume over in my hands. As soon as I had wrestled my children to bed (Whit, despite having been up last night throwing up, despite complaining of being exhausted all day, still went to sleep with the calm and peace [...]
Grace and I were alone last weekend. It was lovely. We went out for dinner (both nights!). We walked down the street on Saturday to a neighborhood restaurant holding hands. We read our books for hours, sitting in bed next to each other. We finished Harry Potter 2 and watched [...]
I’ve been waiting to write my review of Devotion. Waiting in a state of frank reverence as I feel the book permeating my thoughts, my heart, and, dare I say, my spirit. I’ve also been delaying, I confess, because I know I won’t be able to adequately express how powerfully this book spoke [...]
I’ve been poking through my archives today, leafing through old posts and reading quotations that I want to post again. These are all by Catherine Newman, who is without a doubt one of my favorite writers – her book Waiting for Birdy is fantastic, and I miss the blog she used to write for babycenter. [...]
I read Olive Kittredge in November and fell in love with Elizabeth Strout’s writing. Kathryn suggested that I read Abide with Me, claiming that it was even more beautiful. The book has been sitting in my stack for a while, and contributed no doubt to my having that hymn in my head in [...]
It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, [...]
I am reading Awaiting the Child by Isabel Anders, a beautiful meditation on waiting, light, pregnancy, darkness, and religion. Thank you, Nicki, for the recommendation! The book is written as a daily journal by a minister’s wife, experiencing Advent as she also awaits the birth of her first child. It’s a lovely and thoughtful [...]
Grace and I finished reading the first Harry Potter yesterday. I love Harry Potter and always have – I read the first four in the summer of 2000, and since then have bought them when they came out and devoured them enthusiastically. I love the world that J.K. Rowling has created, love the [...]
Today: Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you?
Really really hard to pick just one! So I think I will pick two. Neil Stephenson’s Anathem and Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero.
Anathem is thick, dense, and comes with a 30+ page glossary of the invented words that populate its pages. The story is ostensibly [...]
