Best for: Those who like trivia about everyday life – in this case, about handwriting. (For example, did you know that a typical pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long?) In a nutshell: Author Burns Florey takes the reader on a trip through the history of handwriting, from the very beginning, through those gorgeous (though illegible) tomes produced by monks in the middle ages, up to strict penmanship training in the early 1900s, and ending with contemplation of how handwriting fits into the digital […]
Lately my diet has become a trifle monotonous
A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf is a short, classic, feminist treatise, and it was on my list of 50 Books Every Woman Should Read Before She Turns 40. I know very little about Virginia Woolf. I vaguely remember having to read Mrs. Dalloway in school, but I think I was too young to really appreciate it. I never even saw The Hours with Nicole Kidman. So, I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I began reading this book. A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay […]
My favorite book of 2018
It’s official: I have the yips. I finished reading this book three weeks ago, but every time I’ve tried to write a review, I freeze, not because I have nothing to say but because I can’t seem to calm my mind enough to write the review this book deserves. For you see: Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is my favorite book of the year. Chee shares essays about his life and writing career, keeping the subjects separate at first, then integrating them […]
Because for some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth
CBR10Bingo: Throwback Thursday I was all set to read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon for my Throwback Thursday square, but I’d been struggling so much recently with my writing that I made a last-minute substitution, needing the pick-me-up that Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird never fails to deliver. When I decided to get back into writing 13 years ago, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird was the first of many books on writing that I bought and read, but so far it’s the only one I’ve […]