Writing the good read
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…
I fulfilled a dream of many years yesterday and saw Garrison Keillor and his cohorts perform A Prairie Home Companion for NPR. I’ve loved Keillor as a writer since I was in college in the 1980s. I didn’t get into the show until later. Some of my friends find it too slow and languorous. Maybe…
I have a problem with books in that I read a lot of them and will forgo sleep to keep turning the pages of a good one. And I invariably pick good books. For the last week or so, I’ve been plowing through the trilogy on which the PBS series Call the Midwife is based….
As I have mentioned before, I read a lot and keep a list of dozens of books I want to read. Most of those are culled from reviews I read in a variety of publications, including the Sunday New York Times book review section. I saw an article a few months back about a new…
The picture above? It’s one of five such bookcases I have in the family room. There are another five up in my room. All are filled nearly edge to edge with books. I have about 30 books sitting on the floor waiting to be filed (fiction downstairs, non-fiction up, alphabetically by author). They will displace…
When Tina Fey’s book Bossypants came out last year, there was a lot of buzz, a lot of positive talk about how funny it was. I don’t usually buy celebrity books because I am inevitably disappointed. But I bought it. And I was disappointed. It wasn’t bad, and parts were quite funny. But when I…
My mom came up last weekend to spend some quality time with me and Darling Son. Our relationship is, well, interesting. Since my Wasband made the decision to undergo gender reassignment surgery, Mom has been uninterested in being and unwilling to be in the same room with her. That means that next week, when Darling…
I was wondering what good books I could find to borrow from Amazon.com’s Kindle lending library for Prime members. I searched through about a thousand books listed in biography and literary fiction — two of my favorite genres. I found a half dozen books I’d heard of — a couple, like Water for Elephants, I’d…
I really don’t know how it happens sometimes, how it ends up that I read a book from the pile next to the bed, and the next one I pick up relates to it — matches it in theme, style, subject. I don’t stack them up that way. Sometimes if there is a large number…
I just finished another book. I’m going to write about it next week, but it goes with the book I’ve just started (another example of my unique and unconscious ability to read books back to back that end up going together in some way). The pile next to my bed is getting a little shorter…