get cozy and sink in
Yesterday I wrote about an insight that came to me as I listened to a recent book. I have been on a real streak of good reading material, and I want to write about what I’m reading. But I’m not interested in writing a review—there are other writers much better suited to that. What I…
I recently listened to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A young woman is in the midst of a life review of sorts, and she flips through a book of regrets. It’s a painful exercise, but as she moves through the library, she regards this book differently. Her perspective continues to expand, and she can…
I cannot endorse strongly enough the value of discovering one’s passion project. Here I am on a Tuesday evening with a quick-and-nutritious dinner cooking on the stove. I’m making it late because there wasn’t time after work before I logged into an enriching writers’ meeting on Zoom. I did have time to check my library…
On a new set of bookshelves in my living room, I have dedicated an entire shelf to all the books I have not read yet. They flash at me like a neon sign, Pick Me Next! The selections on this shelf run the gamut. Some are gifts or hand-me-downs. Others are books I picked up…
I stumbled on this recent performance on Britain’s Got Talent, and it reminded me of the way these “Got Talent” shows moved me and kept me company a couple summers ago. So much so that I wrote a poem about how they do more than entertain. They transcend regular moments and veer into something that…
I was just a year older than Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous character when I first read Jane Eyre. I took the Norton Anthology copy with me on my flight to my hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas. I was spending spring break with my then 80-year-old grandma—my kindred spirit. As slow reader in those days, I’m sure I…
I first became aware of Ada Limón when the podcast Poetry Unbound featured her poem Wonder Woman. Her clarity and vulnerability piqued my interest and took my breath away. She remained in the poetry periphery until the Library of Congress named her U.S. Poet Laureate in July 2022, and I started following her on Instagram….
I have a number of things I like to do to celebrate Christmas: listen to Christmas albums (Mariah Carey, The Carpenters, Leslie Odom Jr., Barbara Streisand), watch Christmas movies, read children’s books from my Christmas library–either to myself or with my daughter. This year, I found myself drawn to Christmas-themed novels. I was pretty disappointed…
I read 47 books this year–the most I have read in one year since I began logging my reading habit in 2004. If I wasn’t a cover-to-cover consumer of both The Atlantic and Vanity Fair (and The New Yorker in years past), I’d finish more books. Those subscriptions take hours per issue for me to…
“I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me, or something untoward happens.” –Anne McCaffrey This quote exemplifies my reading life in 2021. Comfort reads dominated my reading log. Last December, I re-read the Christmas themed volume from The Mitford Series, Shepherds Abiding, by Jan Karon. This…
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