I finished this weekend Selected Stories by Alice Munro. I dare say Munro wrote better and better over time: the collection ranges from 1968 to 1993. Her stories are poignant and so true, no matter my total lack of experience with 19th- and early 20th-century Canada. I am experienced with emotion, with the complications of [...]
I have, just now in this moment, finished reading another farcical fiction, another over-mystical navel-gazer, by Tom Robbins: Still Life with Woodpecker. Although in fact featuring prominently other themes, the novel opens with and focuses on "one serious question." Who knows how to make love stay? I will not offer my own wisdom on the [...]
What do I say here: please read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Just so. This novel is heartbreaking and beautiful and—dare I say it—perfect. I offer my sincerest thanks to Claire for having carried the book from San Francisco and to Syd for having lent it to Claire. I will offer little [...]
Packed away in some box in the basement of my childhood home is a well-worn copy of The Paper Crane by Molly Bang. I loved this book as a child and could rightly claim that I still do. The story was classic and darling and, perhaps more importantly, I have always loved art in cut [...]
I have been reading again the beautiful work of José Saramago. His prose is quite dense, featuring unbelievably long sentences and no special delineation of dialogue, each thought punctuated only by a comma. But still, without doubt, the narrative and soul of the work warrants the careful reading required. My present Saramago project, All the [...]
I ate four apple cider doughnuts on an achingly autumn afternoon with my father Federico and my mother Melanie and my sister Nicole and my brother-in-law Mark. Not pictured above are the wedding I attended the day before in Gloucester for Amy and Don or the striking colors of my first return to October in [...]
If ever I love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love. I finished last night [...]
