what I’ve been reading lately:
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A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being is about lots of things: stories, and families, and memory, and history, and secrets, and time, and moments (zen and otherwise). It’s sometimes very heavy, but often very beautiful. Part of the novel is the diary of Nao, a teenage girl in Japan whose family lived in California when…
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King of Shadows by Susan Cooper
When King of Shadows opens, it’s 1999 and we’re introduced to Nat Field, who’s in a company of all-male actors, ages 11-18, who are preparing to travel from the US to the UK to perform two Shakespeare plays in the newly-rebuilt Globe theatre. “We were going into a kind of time warp,” Nat thinks (6).…
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Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
The reading/event for this book that Allie Brosh did with Powell’s Books on Zoom was one of the best things that happened in September, but it took me until now to actually read the copy of the book that I’d purchased—I think I was saving it for Christmas vacation reading? Anyway: I am delighted to…
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Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Hard Times is about what happens when, as one character puts it, a person (or a society, for that matter) thinks that “the wisdom of the Head” is “all-sufficient” and doesn’t think at all about “the wisdom of the Heart” (222). The lesson—that trying to live by rational self-interest alone is not the best path…
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Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell by Charles Simic
Continuing with the theme of “books I bought while traveling but hadn’t read yet”: when I opened my copy of Dime-Store Alchemy, I found the receipt and was reminded that I bought this at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco in December 2012. Nearly eight years after having bought it, I can say that I…
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My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
I bought a copy of My Family and Other Animals at Brattleboro Books in Vermont years ago, based (I think) on nothing more than the colorful cover. As is often the case with books I buy, it took me longer than intended to actually get around to reading it, but wow I’m glad I finally…
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi (not his actual name) thinks of himself as the “Beloved Child of the House” where he lives: a house that is, as far as he can see, the entire world (163). It’s a strange world: Piranesi can walk from one gigantic room to another for miles upon miles and still only have traversed a…
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Emma by Jane Austen
I’m pretty sure I tried to read Emma in high school and didn’t get very far: I think I found it dull and put it down in a hurry. This second attempt at reading it was much more enjoyable, maybe in part because I saw Autumn de Wilde’s film adaptation of it earlier this year…
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24 Hours by Margaret Mahy
24 Hours follows Ellis, who’s 17 and just back from boarding school, over the course of a day-long period that turns out to have a lot more adventure and drama in it than expected. When Ellis runs into a former classmate (Jackie, who’s a little older, but isn’t a university student and doesn’t have a…