“Perhaps there is one book for every life,” Katharine Smyth writes in her biblio-memoir All the Lives We Ever Lived. For Smyth, that book is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and it is the lens with which she views her father’s life and death.
Read MoreJane Austen’s novels conjure up images of country ball rooms, empire waist dresses and teatime in the parlor---not grief. Yet Rachel Cohen’s biblio-memoir, Austen Years: A Memoir in 5 Novels, does just that. Cohen looks at the well-loved British novels through the lens of grief, mirroring Cohen’s own in her in the death of her father. Walking through Austen’s work with Cohen, one will wonder why they never looked at this literature in this way before.
Read MoreTurns out, writing about art doesn’t have to be as technical as one might think. Which makes sense because so much about art is how it makes you feel. Peter Schjeldahl who writes on art for The New Yorker uses metaphor and similes to convey how art makes him feel.
Read MoreWhether is it on the topic of books or anger or fear or sleep, Montaigne seems to meander his way through these various topics, giving the reader the sense that he is simply gabbing. It helps that Montaigne is well read and educated, so even in this wandering, the reader is learning, growing, and thinking.
Read More"Marked by the Spirit with that indelible birthmark, as the Priest wanders, he wanders towards God instead of away. Perhaps Graham Graham too felt this relentless pursuit as an agnostic Catholic, felt the pull of a God who will not let you go."
Read MoreThere are two kinds of people in the world; those who were born and raised in New York City and those who wish they were. Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life is a great book for both kinds of people.
Read MoreFor 40 essays, Diane Ackerman speaks to, about and on the subject of the sunrise. It is astounding how she can describe the beginning of the day in so many ways.
Read MoreDeath has been at the forefront of our thoughts for the past year, no matter how we try to push it away. My review for Christiana N. Peterson’s Awakened By Death for U.S. Catholic.
Read MoreJamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a small book of big truths. Kincaid tells the story of the small island of Antigua in the British West Indies; the colonialism that brought them to the place they are in and the difficulties pulling themselves out now that freedom has been attained.
Read MoreWhy are we so afraid of death? It wasn’t always so. In Death’s Summer Coat: What the History of Death and Dying Teaches Us about Life and Living, Dr. Brandy Schillace explores how our society has sanitized death and made it foreign and unfamiliar.
Read MoreMost years, I read 50 books a year. Each year, someone will inevitably ask me for book recommendations. I thought I’d share some of my favorite reads for this year. Maybe you need Christmas gift recommendations or are just stocking up for the next lockdown. Here are my favorite reads from this year.
Read MoreWhat if St. Monica had written Confessions instead of her son? In Motherhood: A Confession author Natalie Carnes responds to St. Augustine’s work. Each of the thirteen chapters of the book center on a theme found in Augustine’s Confessions which is written as a prayer to God.
Read MoreCheck out my book review on Carey Wallace’s Stories of the Saints for U.S. Catholic
Read MoreJoan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking examines the year after her husband John dies of a heart attack. During this year, not only is she grieving the lost of her husband, but their only daughter is gravely ill. In this year of intense grief, Didion thinks to herself, John might return.
Read MoreI can now add reviewer to my resume.
Check out my book review on Spiritual Conversations with Children: Listening to God Together by Lacy Finn Borgo for U.S. Catholic Magazine
Read MoreIt is not only royalty who are allowed to use the royal “we” when addressing the masses, commoners are allowed too, especially if you are literary royalty such as Virginia Woolf. Woolf uses the royal “we” in her point of view right from the start in her essay, “ I am Christina Rossetti.”
Read MoreYet even without this photograph, I would have had a similar mental picture of MFK Fisher simply by her voice in, Consider the Oyster, her collection of essays on, you guessed it, the subject of oysters. I would have imagined her in pearls with a martini in her hand describing her recipes of oyster- or ---in a plummy diction reminiscent of Martha Stewart before jail, before she became friends with Snoop Dogg and an old Hollywood actress that graced the films for the 30’s or 40’s. Her accent, of course, would be neither British or American in origin, but somewhere that hovers over the Atlantic for those who can afford to spend time in both places frequently enough.
Read MoreThrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide.
