Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II (1615) Though I did not stick very well to my chapter-a-day intention, by reading in fits and starts I have finished Don Quixote. When I last checked in, I was in the middle of Part II; Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were being deceived by their aristocratic hosts, […]
Jane Tyson Clement with Becca Stevens, The Heart’s Necessities (Plough, 2018) The Heart’s Necessities is a book with at least four layers. The foundation layer is a selection of poems by Jane Tyson Clement, written over a period of more than fifty years and mostly unpublished during the poet’s life. Each section of poems, arranged […]
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (1903) Almost everyone must know who Helen Keller is: the girl who became blind and deaf due to illness before she was two years old, enduring several agonizing years of isolation before being reconnected to the light of thought. The play and film “The Miracle Worker” dramatizes this […]
Terrence Real, I Don’t Want To Talk About It (1997) Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You? (2003) Terrence Real, The New Rules of Marriage (2007) After going through a major relationship crisis last summer (now thankfully resolved), I was searching for solace in the used-book section of my favorite bookstore and came […]
Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972) Lately I’ve been disappointed that my son’s interest in reading seems to have flagged. He happily reads Tintin comics and my old Cricket magazines for hours, but the sustained attention required by a novel has been elusive. Until I started reading him Watership Down, that is. I thought this 400-page […]
Last year, during the season of Lent and Easter, I read a poem each day from the collection The Heart’s Time. I loved using this as an opportunity for reflection and contemplation. In late 2018, poking through a bookstore bargain table, I came across 365 Poems for Every Occasion, a compilation from the Academy of […]
Jane Gardam, Bilgewater (1976) The first book you read by a favorite author has a special quality. Even if there are other books by the same author that you realize are more worthy of recognition, the joy of discovery lends your “first” a lingering glow. Sometimes, the particular circumstances of finding the book are stamped […]
Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset (1963) Can a story still be compelling when we already know how it ends? In the case of the Arthurian legend, the appeal never seems to wane. Something about this doomed hero, who will be betrayed by friend and wife and sister and son, yet still strives for goodness and […]
E.H. Shepard, Drawn from Life (1961) Ernest Shepard, best known today as the illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh and its companions, wrote two memoirs that have just been added to the lovely series of Slightly Foxed Editions. These small, colorful hardcovers, bound in the UK, are typeset in a clean, nicely balanced format that is a pleasure […]
Naomi Mitchison, The Blood of the Martyrs (1939) Naomi Mitchison, who died in 1999 at the age of 101, was a prolific writer who dipped into quite an astonishing number of genres. She wrote historical fiction based in both prehistoric and historic times, contemporary fiction, fantasy, science fiction, travelogue, essays, memoirs, biography, plays … is […]