Writing the good read
I’m a sucker for dystopian stories of future Earth. When I heard that Tom Perrotta’s book The Leftovers was being made into a TV series on HBO, I thought I should get the book and read it already. It had been on my list since it was published in 2011. There have been other similar…
I really should call this “words of the day” because there’s no way I can pick just one word from this week’s book, Horologicon by Mark Forsyth, proprietor of the InkyFool blog. I’ve said before I’m a word geek. Show me a book about words and their origins, or the evolution of language and I’ll…
I had some great English teachers in high school — women who challenged my thinking and my reading. They exposed me to authors I’d never have come to on my own (Heinrich Böll), and spurred me to dig deeper into the writing of authors who are part of almost every high school syllibus (the entire…
I remember hearing David Rakoff on This American Life and thinking he was David Sedaris, one of my favorite TAL contributors and authors, with a distinctive voice that makes everything he says funnier. I didn’t know he wrote books, too. But after he died of cancer at 47 last year, there was a lot of…
I didn’t have The Blue Book on my radar at all. But I read a review in the New York Times that talked about the author, AL Kennedy, as most closely akin to Richard Ford, whose book Canada I loved and wrote about previously. So I put it on my list. It sat on the…
I belong to this amazing organization for freelance writers and editors called Freelance Success. It has been instrumental in all of the work I have done for national publications and websites, and at about a hundred bucks a year, my membership over the last decade or so has paid for itself many times over. Every…
Earlier this month, I wrote about my new-found respect for Phillip Lopate, regarded as one of the best living writers of thepersonal essay. I wanted to expand my knowledge of the genre — and I had never thought of it as that before, but as the way some writers opine on a variety of subjects…
Full disclosure: I haven’t yet read What Do Women Want, this week’s book. However, I have read articles, excerpts, reviews, and listened to interviews with the author, Daniel Bergner. It’s on my nightstand awaiting its turn. But all that exposure to it has got me thinking. Naturally, my thinking demanded an audience. The book looks…
I know some of you are probably hurting for ideas of what to get your dad for Father’s Day on Sunday. I’m here to help. In case you didn’t know, I like to read. So I’ve culled through the books I’ve read in the last few months for five that might be good options to…