Last Book I Loved
-
Adam Parker Cogbill: The Last Book I Loved, Abbott Awaits
I am as guilty as any other reader I know of opening or hijacking conversations with some derivation of, “You know what you should read?” I can’t help myself; I read something I loved, and I want to share. There…
-
The Last Book I Loved: The Cat’s Table
For years when I was young I would crouch beneath the dinner table to watch my parents drink after-dinner coffee and wine with an ever-changing group of scientists—a tall man from Colombia whose mustache is even more impressive than my…
-
The Last Poem I Loved: “Reaching Around For You” by D.A. Powell
April is over. We can’t stop these things from happening, no. We’re slipping out of spring into summer, out of busy semesters and National Poetry Month. We’re slipping outside our houses, and offices, and coffeeshops after the seemingly innumerable gray…
-
The Last Book I Loved: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
There is a passage in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn where Francie Nolan, the book’s protagonist, is described as the sum of many parts. A genetic and experiential palimpsest, Francie:
-
The Last Poem I Loved: Zachary Schomburg’s Poem-Film “Your Limbs Will Be Torn Off In a Farm Accident”
When I saw this poem, I took it personally. I cried. I sent it to friends and family. “Look at this, look at this!” My emails were demanding. “This is what happened to me.”
-
Sarah Simpson: The Last Book I Loved, The Subterraneans
Truman Capote famously said that what Jack Kerouac did wasn’t writing, but typing. I take just as much offense today to this slander as I did ten years ago as an undergraduate when first hearing it quoted by an English…
-
Rimas Uzgiris: The Last Book of Poetry I Loved, The Living Fire
I had read the book months ago. And then, standing in front of Edward Hopper’s “The House by the Railroad” at the Museum of Modern Art, I found myself trying to explain to a tango-friend from South Africa why this…
-
Molly O’Brien: The Last Book I Loved, White Teeth
I was ten years old when 1999 became 2000. My knowledge of the Y2K problem was vague; I could only glean a nebulous mood of panic from overheard newscasts and conversations between adults. My own parents did not seem worried.…
-
The Last Book I Loved: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
Based on the true story of an English midland town in the year 1666 that quarantined itself to sweat out the bubonic plague, Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague reminds me of the private school campus…
-
The Last Book I Loved: The Last American Man
It’s easy to write off one author based on a best-seller. Call it jealousy, call it high-end literary disdain, call it whatever you want, but it’s easy to give in to the impulse to distrust something once it’s become popular.…
-
The Last Poem I Loved: “Modotti” by Adrienne Rich
I didn’t have time to be devastated on the day Adrienne Rich died, but I still couldn’t keep back the tears. Like so many others, Rich was The One to me, America’s greatest living everything I ever wanted to be:…
-
Alyssa Roibal: The Last Book I Loved, Glaciers
Alexis M. Smith’s Glaciers is a story for daydreamers, for people who see a story where others do not. It is not epic and it won’t change your life, but it has affected me greatly. I love when a short,…