The problem with reading a modern memoir is that often they suck. The influx of reality shows and confessional writing (ahem, Tori Spelling) has placed an emphasis on story and…
I came late to the Alice Munro party but now that I’m here I’m planted and staying. This book floored me—the first story, yes, good, interesting, intriguing, but it was…
The book I’m reading now, Microcosms by Claudio Magris. I’m traveling in China while falling in love with a book about the tiny and strange borderlands between Croatia (Istria) and…
I fall in love with books all the time. I remember periods of my life this way – like “what’s-his-name left me when I was reading Mrs. Dalloway” or “I…
In 1969, a lonesome amateur scholar, David Rodinsky, disappeared without trace from his caretaker’s garret above the Princelet Street Synagogue in Jewish East London. His room, unsealed a decade later,…
I read The Centaur by John Updike out of funereal obligation, and had given up on it twice before, but this time put my misgivings to rest and plowed through…
I fall in love pretty easily, so for me right now it’s Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, which is her take on John Winthrop, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson of…