Book review: In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Carmen Maria Machado writes a groundbreaking, stylistic account of an emotionally and mentally abusive lesbian relationship, and underscores the message that domestic abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships are neither the subject of adequate scholarship nor open discussion, nor even, to some... Continue Reading →
The Roadside Culinary Culture of the American South
Book review: Road Sides, by Emily Wallace (Amazon / Book Depository) There are miles left to go, meals left to eat, junque left to buy, stories left to collect. Folklore historian Emily Wallace writes that "roadside hyperbole is a thing I tend to heed": she can't see a sign proclaiming the best, or occasionally the worst, of something... Continue Reading →
An Art Critic Unravels a Decades-Old Family Mystery
Book review: Five Days Gone, by Laura Cumming (Amazon / Book Depository) When she was three years old, in 1929, a young girl was kidnapped from a beach in Lincolnshire, on the eastern coast of England. She was returned to her family after those five days, and didn't even learn that this had happened to... Continue Reading →
A Tour Through the Crimes and Criminals of Belle Époque Paris
Book review: The Crimes of Paris, by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler (Amazon / Book Depository) The disappearance of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre stunned Parisians, who had long dismissed any impossible task with the remark that doing so 'would be like trying to steal the Mona Lisa.' The central defining event in The Crimes of... Continue Reading →
12 Upcoming Nonfiction Titles to Look Forward to in Fall 2019
How has your nonfiction reading been so far this year? I've read so many good ones! A list of midyear favorites is coming around the end of the month. But as we reach the year's mid-point, I already can't wait to look ahead at what's coming out in fall. Here's some of the new nonfiction coming... Continue Reading →
Art and Anecdotes from One Year in Paris
Book review: A Paris Year, by Janice MacLeod (Amazon / Book Depository) Bonjour Bonjour Ça va Ça va Ça va Ça va Bonjour Bonjour. It’s really that easy to have an entire conversation in French. There is no waving hello. This is not the French way. When you wave hello their eyes follow your hand... Continue Reading →
Rhapsodizing Blue
Book review: Bluets, by Maggie Nelson (Amazon / Book Depository) Last night I wept in a way I haven’t wept for some time. I wept until I aged myself. I watched it happen in the mirror. I watched the lines arrive around my eyes like engraved sunbursts; it was like watching flowers open in time-lapse... Continue Reading →
Culinary Visits with Literary Mentors
Book review: The Traveling Feast, by Rick Bass (Amazon / Book Depository) I decided to take a break from writing and go on an extended pilgrimage. I set out traveling the country (and in one case Europe) to visit writers who were mostly a generation older than I am, the ones who helped me become... Continue Reading →
Smart, Richly Crafted Essays from the Incomparable Zadie Smith
Book review: Feel Free, by Zadie Smith (Amazon / Book Depository) Novelist Zadie Smith has got to be one of the most brilliant minds writing today. She burst onto the literary scene with the novel White Teeth in 2000 and has been a heavyweight presence ever since. I read that book and only retained from... Continue Reading →
The Life-Saving Magic of Poetry
Book review: Poetry Will Save Your Life, by Jill Bialosky "All poems become, to a certain degree, personal to a reader." Poet, editor, and novelist Jill Bialosky writes a memoir structured around the poems that have helped her through life, imbuing it with deeper meaning and giving subtle guidance and reassurances through turmoil and joy. Sometimes they act... Continue Reading →
Images of Apocalypse in the Everyday
Book review: The World is On Fire, by Joni Tevis Joni Tevis has a strange talent for writing essays that combine the most unlikely, unrelated subjects, skipping without any obvious connection between topics and somehow making it work as a coherent, emotional, interesting piece. I've never read anything quite like it before. As one example,... Continue Reading →
A Surrealist Writes Her Madness
Book review: Down Below, by Leonora Carrington A strange, surreal account of painter, sculptor and writer Leonora Carrington's 1943 stay in a Spanish mental institution after descending into mental illness. An English transplant to France where the Surrealist movement had found fertile ground, Carrington wrote this short book, actually more like an extended essay, as a... Continue Reading →