Like some other lovers of literature, I’m a bit too prone to have my nose in a book all the time and forget about the world around me. So when I bought a notebook with blank pages by mistake, instead of my usual ruled journal, I thought it might be a good chance to do […]
Alexandra Risen, Unearthed (2016) Subtitled “Love, Acceptance, and Other Lessons from an Abandoned Garden,” Unearthed is a gardening memoir that will appeal even to non-gardeners (like me). To start with, there’s the chance to vicariously experience taking an unloved, abandoned place and turning it into a magical place of refuge and healing — without having […]
Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals (1956) If cold and darkness are getting you down, I have a prescription for you: Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, an excellent antidote for the winter doldrums. The third of the delightful Slightly Foxed Editions that I’ve been pleased to review recently, it’s an artfully crafted, […]
Helen Macdonald, H Is for Hawk (2015) H Is for Hawk does what many of my favorite non-fiction books do: it makes connections between things and ideas that are surprising and genuine and painful, enriching us by raising our experience of life to a new level of consciousness. It reminds us what it means […]