Last I wrote here, I shared my goal to read fifty books in 2018. I’m happy to report that I succeeded, while also admitting that it was kind of a sprint to the finish. I’ve been reflecting on what my reading meant to me, how it felt to read more consistently than I possibly ever have. What did I glean from those fifty books? Am I a more engaged reader and/or thinker because of them...
Despite my silence here, 2018, so far, has been one of my busiest reading years to date. The decision to read more was intentional, but other than setting a goal number of books to read for the year I put no other limits or expectations on myself. I also removed the pressure to write about what I was reading. I wanted to read for the sake of reading for pleasure and out of curiosity. Perhaps the...
It took me awhile to find my way to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Mentions of the book kept following me around my digital space, popping up in must-read lists, referenced loosely in discussions tied to my absolute favorite Jane Eyre. It sounded intriguing in its Gothic ways, but was also on the fringe of my literary knowledge. I couldn’t place du Maurier in any historical context...
Yesterday I finished Rachel Joyce’s latest novel, The Music Shop, which in perfect Rachel Joyce fashion was a very intimate visit with its inhabitants. But as I was sitting here struggling to come up with something to say about its plot, I realized that the book was simply an experience, much like the music it employs to help tell its tale. Frank, music shop owner and vinyl aficionado, is a...
In a culture that is fixated on violence as entertainment, and is becoming increasingly desensitized to random acts of manslaughter, it’s easy to forget that murder is not only a horrific plot device or a stomach-dropping headline; we don’t really give much time or attention to victims of crime for very long before we move on to the next big thing. Sarah Perry’s memoir, After...
Finding the right book at the right time is one of those rare gifts from the universe, much like finding forgotten chocolate in my desk drawer, or seeing a rainbow on an especially desultory day. Starting 2018 with Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine was one of those rare gifts, even doubly so in setting the tone for what I hope to be a year of plentiful literary wanderings...
I’ve been in a reading slump for awhile now, though it’s hard to say why it persisted for so long. Earlier in the summer I embarked on a necessary professional transition, which is to say I wasn’t happy in my position and I did the thing where you update your written list of credentials, send them off for consideration, and then hope you get to talk to someone else about...
The recommendation to read Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is came with a caveat: don’t ready anything about the book, not even the description on the book jacket, just start reading it. So, this is precisely how I proceeded, and having since gone back and read all these previously banned descriptions, I’m glad I avoided them. I don’t think they gave too much away...
Eden Collinsworth’s book, Behaving Badly, somehow made it onto my radar, i.e. my library holds list, and while I’m hard pressed to recall the prompt to read it, I enjoyed its company. Behaving Badly felt like a philosophical tour of, or perhaps a decent introduction to, morality as it applies to relationships, money, business, sex, and technology. While Collinsworth leaves her initial...
As someone whose professional life exists in the almighty digital world, reading Doree Shafrir’s Startup felt a little too familiar. While I’ve never worked for a bona fide startup, I have dabbled in the agency world where terms like “gamification” and “market disrupter” were part of the daily buzz. If a company has to heavily promote a certain culture of free...
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