In the last couple weeks I have found myself pinned between the return to work and busyness after the relative quiet of the holiday season and a national crisis. I hit a point last week staring at a stack of partially-read books feeling the existential anxiety of not having enough time to read all the … Continue reading Reading During Difficult Times
reading life
2020 Reading List – The Final
In one of the two holiday movies I watch without fail, It's a Wonderful Life, lead character George Bailey is a man who has always resented his meagre, small town life until he gets a chance to see what said town would have been like if he'd never been born. George discovers that he actually … Continue reading 2020 Reading List – The Final
The Wheelhouse Project – New Addition! – Tantalizing Taste Books
I know I promised some hot Jane Austen content. I planned for this focus because I'm currently working my way through a history of five female abstract impressionist painters that, while mesmerizing, is a 700-page beast of a book. But last weekend I took a break from the behemoth because a slim, YA fantasy needed … Continue reading The Wheelhouse Project – New Addition! – Tantalizing Taste Books
Hanging on By the Fingernails, or the Comfort of Known Books
Friends, how are you doing? For me, this has been a rough and weary couple of weeks with the looming election and the ongoing state of the nation and the world. Which has made it hard to read. I keep picking up books, peeking at them or starting a bit, and then setting them aside. … Continue reading Hanging on By the Fingernails, or the Comfort of Known Books
On the Re-Reading Life and Vivian Gornick’s ‘Unfinished Business’
Looking over my reading list this past year I saw stellar book after stellar book. Bam, bam, bam, nearly all excellent reads. And then I got to the past few weeks and realized that things lately have been merely fine—good but not great, decent but not deepening. And then I picked up Vivian Gornick's Unfinished … Continue reading On the Re-Reading Life and Vivian Gornick’s ‘Unfinished Business’
Read Books by Black Authors
I am foregoing a normal post this week because the events of the past two weeks mean that now is not the time for me to fill the air with anecdotes from my reading life. Last night I was talking with my partner about the limits of truly understanding what it means to live as … Continue reading Read Books by Black Authors
Notions, Early April Edition
Hello. How are you? Doing okay or not so much or a combination of all of the above? Man, I miss bookstores and libraries.Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Here are some fun things from the internet to entertain, delight, and/or tickle your brain: Doing some reading while social distancing? Check out Bookshop, an online book retailer that … Continue reading Notions, Early April Edition
Possessions, Witches, Parasites.
After work yesterday, I went to my local watering hole and ordered a beer. It took a while for my partner to arrive, saying as he sat down, "Sorry. Have you been waiting long?" "That's okay," I replied. "You gave me time to finish my book." And it was that deployment of the possessive "my" … Continue reading Possessions, Witches, Parasites.
Notions, January 2020 edition (Formerly “Bits and Bobs”)
I am in a hell of my own making. (A delightful hell! The best kind of hell!) I have too many books to read. I have books for work and I have books for fun, books that flirted with me from the library shelves (their come-hither covers obscuring their three-week checkout times!) and books gifted … Continue reading Notions, January 2020 edition (Formerly “Bits and Bobs”)
Introducing – The Wheelhouse Project
The Reading Glasses podcast introduced me to the idea of the four "doorways," those entry points that get us into a book. The doorways were created by Nancy Pearl as a more productive way for librarians and others to get readers to a new book they'd be more likely to enjoy. The doorways represent experiential … Continue reading Introducing – The Wheelhouse Project
