Kindling

I already decided that I don’t want a Kindle (you know that electronic book-reading thing that you get from Amazon); however, I thought I would try it out while on vacation with a kindle-owner.  I read part of a New Yorker, but found that it wasn’t quite the organic experience that I’m used to – [...]

Read Full Post »

The Help

I finally read The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  It was a compelling read, with much suspense and a real sense of the danger that Aibileen, Minny and the other maids were courting through their covert writing project.  The beating and blinding of one maid’s son for using a white bathroom provides a serious counterpoint to [...]

Read Full Post »

What’s everybody reading?

Whilst traveling (has anyone else noticed an increase in the use of ‘whilst’?), I like to check out what my fellow passengers are reading.  A lady in the Charleston airport was in the early pages of The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga; she also had the latest book by Pat Conroy (South of Broad) in her [...]

Read Full Post »

On aging and death

I  used to trick myself by adding a year or two to my age by way of becoming used to the idea of being 40 and then 50.  So, recently, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I am actually turning 52, not 53.  The term over-the-hill is a bit of a joke bringing to mind silly [...]

Read Full Post »

Netherland

After reading descriptions of Joseph O’Neill’s new novel Netherland which talked of it as a post 9/11 novel, I was not really interested in reading it and that is the reaction of most people when I attempt to describe the book in reference to that date.  However, after hearing the author interviewed by Terri Gross on Fresh [...]

Read Full Post »

The White Whale

As fellow English majors who never got around to finishing Moby Dick, BC and I finally decided to try it again. My first attempt, my ‘furthest south,’ if you will, brought me to page 247 in my copy. BC actually was supposed to read it in a college class, but never did.  So the quest began, and like barnacles [...]

Read Full Post »

The White Tiger

For sometime I’ve felt that some of the best novelists writing in English are Indians.  Just as the Irish dominated English literature in the early part of the 20th century,  with Yeats, Joyce and Shaw, I feel the Indians are using the English language to advance literature, to make the novel their own.  Writers like [...]

Read Full Post »

Why I read the New Yorker

I remember the first time I picked up a copy of The New Yorker from where it was lying on a friend’s Mother’s kitchen table.  This was sometime in the eighties.  I read one snippet from the “Talk of the Town” and was immediately intrigued.  Another time I found an issue at their house and [...]

Read Full Post »

School for Love

I just read a great, little book, lent me by my sister, School for Love, by Olivia Manning.  I read Manning’s Levant and Balkan trilogies many years ago after seeing The Fortunes of War with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.  I liked those works, but never thought to check if she wrote anything else.  This book [...]

Read Full Post »

Back from a long hiatus

What have I been doing with myself since my last post in February? Well, taxes took a long time this year, then there was the destination wedding in Key West! Then, hosting Passover dinner for 17; plus, once I stop doing something, whether it’s writing or playing the piano or exercising, it just seems that much [...]

Read Full Post »