Reading Room

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…

The Dance of Anger – A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships – Harriet Goldhot Lerner Necessary Losses – Judith Viorst Broken Open – How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow – Elizabeth Lesser When the Heart Waits – Sue Monk Kidd Dance of the Dissident Daughter – Sue Monk Kidd The…