Tag Archives: books

The Mysteries of Modern Technology

The Way We Live Now

Last week we reorganized our books. We have over 1,000 books, distributed in bookcases throughout the house. Most of them are in alphabetical order, but we now have a Jane Austen section, a Bronte section, a Conrad section, and a Dickens section. Most of these books have introductions, but not all have footnotes. (That’s why I often opt for Penguins.) I used to skip the footnotes, but now enjoy the odd mix of trivia and essential information. I feel affection for the footnote writers who educate us about barouches, carriages, and 19th-century dialect.

When I was getting used to the city, I bicycled daily to the public library to “rescue” discarded books. The main library was divesting itself of classics and out-of-print 20^th-century books. Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Sir Walter Scott abounded. I also found D. E. Stevenson’s Mrs. Tim books and the Dutch mystery writer Willem Van de Wetering’s autobiographical books about Zen.

By the way, none of these were rare books. Most were stained, smudged, dog-eared, you name it. If they’d ever had value, they had none now. All I could do was save them from the dumpster.

When you have opted out of the work force, you read more than normal people do. You don’t read all the time – I don’t mean to imply that – but at least three or four hours a day. The complete works of Horace? Yes. The complete works of Edith Wharton? Of course. Monica Dickens’s One Pair of Hands and E. M. Delafield’s Provincial Lady books? Affirmative. And there was time for David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, Caroline Gordon’s short stories, and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.

I was living, more or less, in a world of old-ish and ancient literature. “Has school started?” a man quipped one summer day when I had spread out my notebooks and reference books on a table at a coffeehouse.

But most people are oblivious of what you’re reading in public. Conducting a business on your laptop? Boring, at worst. Reading in a foreign language? A nutcase, but no one comments on it. Delving into reference books and taking notes? Possibly a teacher or lawyer. And then there are the conversationalists who talk about their intimate lives. We listen, because the acoustics make it impossible not to.

That’s where I learned that the plans for a summer bluegrass festival had gone awry. The young woman, the assistant director, had been fired for an “indiscretion,” as she called it. She Had Had An Affair with the Married Director. More than an indiscretion, I thought. People were fired all the time for less. One of my friends, a popular teacher at a private school, was fired for giving C’s to students who had rich, influential parents. But for the grace of gods… fortunately, the better and the best students signed up for my classes, so I didn’t have that dilemma.

At one time I was a loudmouth like that fired assistant director. Not only did I talk freely about my opinions of everything under the sun, I often referred to people by first and last names. “Jane Bowers said…” as if it were necessary to distinguish her from all the other Janes.

One day I was reading a Russian novel when a “frenemy” rushed over and confronted me because she and I had applied for the same job. “You ruined my chances!” she shrieked. Wait, what, why… And what business was it of hers? Neither of us got the job. But “I’m glad you didn’t get it,” a friend who worked there said. “You’re too nice.” And one of the supervisors told me privately, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease, Kat.”

All I can say is, it is a good thing I am bookish. Books have gotten me through every crisis in my life. After a hospitalization, I binge-read Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles and Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool. I took notes on what people read on the bus. Mostly it was the newspapers, but there were also The Cat Who... mysteries, the latest Oprah book, and a book about Andy Warhol.

A friend who died in her early 40s asked me: Do you think it’s enough to have been a reader in life?

Yes, I do. I adamantly do. No one at her memorial service mentioned her love of books, and come to think of it, I have never heard anyone at a memorial service mention the love of reading.

But, believe me, she was bookish, and if she had lived, I would have found out about twice as many books.

What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology

2 Replies

Here’s what you do not know about the 1960s: no one used the word “hippie.”

It was meaningless, it was very TV. This media-generated term first appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in 1965 and should have evaporated. Never in conversation did anyone say “hippie.” Never did anyone identify herself as a “hippie.” Some called themselves “freaks” to denote their status in “alternative culture.”

Some freaks were philosophical, others full-fledged radicals. They gardened, read, listened to music, protested against the war, discussed politics. And what culture did they pass on to our generation?

BOOKS I READ ON THE RECOMMENDATION OF FREAKS

The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan. This landmark book made me realize, “Oh! I don’t have to be a housewife.”

Dune, by Frank Herbert. This ecological science fiction classic was a perfect match for The Environmental Handbook and The Population Bomb, two best-selling books about the environment. Dune is brilliant, entertaining, and still relevant today, though the others may be a bit dated.

Gandhi’s Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. I am awed by Gandhi and read this on the recommendation of a woman who read autobiographies instead of self-help books.

Our Bodies, Ourselves. A guide to women’s health, birth control, abortion, and taking control of our bodies, published by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective in 1970 and since revised.

Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray. A brilliant Victorian novel centered on the exploits of the rogue, Becky Sharp. Scarlett in Gone with the Wind is obviously based on Becky.

The Blithedale Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne lived briefly in a commune in Massachusetts. In his charming novel, The Blithedale Romance, the narrator Miles Coverdale charts the rise and inevitable fall of the commune at Blithedale Farm.

I also read other people’s coffee table books on Renoir, Dali, and Alex Katz

BOOKS I CHOSE FOR THEIR HIP COVERS IN FREAKDOM

Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse. This psychedelic novel impressed me at the time, but on a recent rereading I was horrified by the misogynistic final scene. There is also a movie with Max Von Sydow.

Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann. I saw the German movie, then read the book in translation.

Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong. Influenced by the renegade Henry Miller, Jong was an overnight sensation and her sexy autobiographical novel was considered groundbreaking.

Sexual Politics, by Kate Millet. Millet’s best-selling book of literary criticism temporarily destroyed my confidence in my taste. She attacked male writers on the basis of their sexism, including D. H. Lawrence. Ultimately, I rejected this book because her radicalism did not serve literature well. Long live Lawrence’s novels and poetry!

In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. I went to church after reading this novel but decided I had no vocation to be a nun, thank God! Godden wrote three fascinating nun novels, the most famous of which is Black Narcissus. In This House of Brede is the best.

ARE MOVIES TOO COMMERCIAL?

None of the “freaks” I knew attended movies. “Beautiful women and handsome men,” one friend mocked as I got ready to go to a Hardy adaptation.

She was right, but I enjoyed the film.

Since the pandemic I have adopted and adapted her philosophy. “Beautiful women, handsome men… and monsters.”

What happened to the movies?

Three Books I’ll (Probably) Never Read

2 Replies

Some books never make the TBR, though I have owned them for years. I shiver with apprehension every time I look at them, and yet I cannot give them away because they might make me wittier or thinner, or provide escape reading in February, the month devoted to The Green Hat and Terry Pratchett.

Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote was published in 1986. Neither my spouse nor I remember buying it. It’s as though it grew from the shelf like one of the pods in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Though I have tried to read it several times, I am repulsed by her profane, potty-mouthed, post-modern prose. And yet reading it would make me hip and fabulous, because Acker is the Patti Smith, or is it the William Burroughs? of “punk” literature.

Acker was relentlessly hip, and her writing relentlessly dull. In this boisterous little novel, a female Don Quixote has an abortion and then travels with dogs across America and London, meditating on the insane cultures. There is one amusing bit: Quixote believes that Prince should be the president of the United States, because “all the presidents since World War II have been stupid anyway.” He would have been better at show biz than Reagan, an actor.

Acker’s prose is awkward. “Don Quixote decided the only thing was to be happy. Since the only reason she went out of the house was to fuck, she decided that to be happy’s to fuck.”

But isn’t that clumsy writing?

Edna Ferber is an underrated, once popular, writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for her novel, So Big, a page-turner about the struggles of a successful woman farmer and her worthless son. Not surprisingly, Ferber never attained the kudos of comparable male Pulitzer winners, like Sinclair Lewis and Booth Tarkington.

I discovered Ferber’s historical novels when I found a Ferber omnibus at a sale. She reminds me slightly of Willa Cather, and I’m surprised Ferber is not in the women’s sub-canon, if not the traditional academic canon. I enjoyed her novel Showboat, which was made into a Broadway musical and movie. And her melodramatic, fascinating novel, Giant, which was adapted as movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, traces the drama and dysfunction of an unhappy, rich oil family in Texas.

But there is one Ferber’s novel I cannot read, Cimmaron.

Cimmaron is, in a way, a Western, set during the Oklahoma Gold Rush. I read 125 pages, but the dreary landscape undid me In every scene, Oklahoma is dry and dusty, or muddy and dirty, and if I remember correctly, there are boards instead of sidewalks.

It is culture shock for Sabra, a young woman from a Southern family, who follows her husband, Yancey, a lawyer, into the wilds, because he wants the free land: there is “a land rush.” Sabra has the impossible task of turning of shack into a home, while Yancey, a lawyer, has to prove himself to their rough neighbors. And everybody has a gun. Nobody in Oklahoma in Cimmaron ever thought of gun control.

Depressing, yes? But will I finish Cimmaron in 2024?

It does feel like the time of year when I should read a historical novel.

Richard Garnett’s biography, Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life, is, in many ways, an appealing book. Fans of Russian literature will be curious about Constance Garnett, the famous early translator of Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.

Her grandson, Richard Garnett, has written a thorough, if plodding, biography, with fascinating source material, including letters from Chekhov and Tolstoy.

It’s the size of the pages I don’t like, This attractive paperback has oversized pages crammed with print. Mjnd you, it’s not the size of the print so much as the size of the pages. But I might finish this in the summer, when the natural light is brighter, and it will seem more readable..

Do you hang on to books you positively dislike or will never read? Do tell.

Head-in-a-Book Shopping Guide: Why Don’t Book Nerds Want a Sweater like Normal People?

Fireworks, Gardening, and Gardening Books

2 Replies

The supermarket shut down the garden center to open a fireworks tent. Imagine my surprise to discover flowers had been replaced by firecrackers. I’d hoped to buy begonias, snapdragons, pansies, and marigolds at deep discount prices (75% off).

Fireworks used to be illegal in this state, except for public firework displays at parks, and that is the law in my city, too. But anyone can buy fireworks in the suburbs. The BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! has already begun. Naturally, some of my fellow citizens will put on a noisy, unwanted show, too. I will turn on the AC to drown out the noise of the errant combustibles.

I’m so disappointed that the garden center closed early. But on a philosophical note, the plants were getting pretty wilted. The cashier took one look at the dried-up snapdragons last week and told me to take another four-pack free.

Most of the discount plants are fine, but something weird is going on with the new geraniums: the petals in the middle of each flower crumple and turn brown while the outside petals blossom. Some gross wormy things live under the pot of marigolds, so I isolated it. Should I throw it out? And don’t get me started on the seeds: I planted sunflower seeds and coneflower seeds, but the plants are only 6 inches tall. That is, if they are indeed sunflowers and coneflowers. Nothing has bloomed yet. Everything is“deer-proof” and “drought-proof,” but how about “rabbit-proof”?

I ask, “Do you know which are the flowers and which are the weeds?”

“Wait and see,” one non-gardener suggests.

I love gardening books, especially memoirs and comical chronicles. Among my favorites is Beverly Nichols’s Merry Hall trilogy, Merry Hall, Laughter on the Stairs, and Sunlight on the Lawn. Not only is he a great gardener, he is a charming and often funny writer. He writes, “ I love geraniums, and anybody who does not love geraniums must obviously be a depraved and loathsome person.”

I love geraniums. They last for years if you bring them inside for the winter. My mother and grandmother used to compete to see who could grow the best geraniums. Mother always won. “And I don’t do anything except water them.”

Perhaps I am also fond of geraniums because of my love of Elizabeth Goudge’s books. I vaguely recall, perhaps in her novel, A Little White Horse, that Maria comes across a small hidden house with geraniums in the window. (This detail may be wrong, as I haven’t read this book in eons.) Gardens are always important in Elizabeth Goudge’s novels. In The White Witch, Froniga, who is half gypsy and reputed to be a witch, has a quasi-magical touch with her garden. There are flowers, trees, shrubs, and medicinal herbs. She is a healer.

In E. Nesbit’s The Lark, her best adult novel, flowers are the bread and butter of Jane and Lucilla, whose guardian has gambled away their money. All they have left is a tiny cottage with a pretty garden. They sell the the flowers – until all the flowers are gone.

Then they don’t know what to do. Buy another house? Plant another garden? But it takes time for a garden to grow.

…they bought a gardening book – and spent the evening over it. You tend to sit in the kitchen when it is very light and clean, bright with gay-coloured crockery and sparkling with tinsmith’s work; and when you have it to yourselves; and when, anyhow, you have to get your own supper, and you may as well eat it where you cook it… Especially when the kitchen window looks out on the back garden, where the fruit trees are near blossom, and the parlours both look out on the front garden, the whole of whose floral splendour was just sold for fifteen shillings and ninepence.

What are your favorite garden books, novels, or poems?

Tacky Covers: Books from Our Shelves

6 Replies

I was discouraged when I searched our shelves for books with tacky covers to find mostly Penguins, Viragos, and other beautifully-designed books. We have great taste.

That was not always the case: there used to be cheap mass market paperbacks. For instance, my dad’s copy of John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8 featured a scantily-clad woman on the cover, probably modeled after Elizabeth Taylor, who stars in the film. (We have a Modern Library hardback of O’Hara’s short novels!) And a green-haired woman adorned the cover of my first copy of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

I did find a few books with ridiculous covers, though. Tacky, tacky!

These quasi-pornographic covers bear no relation to the content of Jane Gaskell’s books. In 1979, Ms. magazine praised the English fantasy writer’s five-book Atlan saga. I have read these whimsical feminist novels twice: the narrator, Cija, a cranky princess raised in a tower, has been told erroneously that men are extinct. When she is taken hostage by the Dragon-General Zerd, her nurse exhorts her to seduce and assassinate him. Well, Cija is just out of the tower! She is not an assassin. Throughout the saga, Cija remains his enemy, though, and later tries to protect an Edenic continent, Atlan, from Zerd’s invasion.

Gaskell is a compelling, entertaining writer, with an eye for detail and a talent for witty dialogue. The hardcovers have perfectly tasteful covers, by the way.

Julian Barnes once wrote in the London Review of Books that we don’t need more translations of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. He suggested that publishers commission new translations of Balzac’s lesser-known works, including the neglected novel, Seraphita.

I tracked down a Dedalus European Classic paperback of Seraphita with a hideous cover and an awkward 1901 translation by Clara Bell. The book jacket avers that it is the story of “the angelic and mysterious hermaphrodite Seraphita, who seems to inspire love in all she meets.”
I did not enjoy it. Was it the translation?

The cover illustration of Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s Rigadoon, “Wounded Soldier,”by Otto Dix, horrifies me. According to the jacket copy, the novel “re-creates a nightmarish trek through Germany in the last days of World War II.” I would be more likely to read this if the cover were less repulsive, but I would have to be in a dark mood.

The award-winning Clifford D. Simak is one of my favorite science fiction writers. I loved his novel, City, a charming story of talking dogs, left behind on Earth by humans as archivists of the human experience. His later books are uneven: he has gone astray in Shakespeare’s Planet (1979). And what a cover!

In the 1980s, Frederick Barthelme was a critically- acclaimed novelist, but most of his books are out-of-print. The Baltimore Sun said of his novel, Tracer: “He does for 7-Eleven what Edward Hopper did for the all-night diner.”

Nonetheless, this cover is completely off: what is that yellow thing with the pink crest?

I love Frederick Barthelme’s books, though.

Five Favorite Books of 2020 & A Reader’s Year of Isolation

4 Replies

“Antiquarian Cat Reading,” by Edward Gorey

Things WILL be better in 2021.

And so I will end the blogging year with a frivolous list. At this point you don’t need another Best Books of the Year list, but here are FIVE FAVORITES of 2020. (Click on the titles to read my reviews.)

FIVE OF MY FAVORITES OF THE YEAR

The Story of Stanley Brent by Elizabeth Berridge

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Desire by Una L. Silberrad

A Reader’s Year of Isolation

This has been, in many ways, a terrifying year. Not THE most terrifying year, but a very dangerous one. In March when Covid-19 erupted here, I was terrified, especially for my husband, who thought the coronavirus was just the flu. I yanked him into the street when pedestrians approached us on the sidewalk. And in the first weeks of the brief shutdown (not an official lockdown), people loitered on the lawns and sidewalks, chatting and standing too close together, while I grimly walked in the street to avoid them.

I wanted to say, “The virus is airborne, people. That’s what social distancing is for!”

But they couldn’t get their heads around the airborne virus that also required washing hands. And we didn’t even have masks in those early days.

People asked, What will you do with all the leisure while working at home? Well, it wasn’t a holiday. So hard to explain…

Of course we read a lot in 2020, but no more than usual. Many have written about a lowgrade depression that interfered with reading, and in the beginning I was so distracted that I read only classics. There was much reading of Chekhov, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, James M. Cain, George Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. Did I have no time to waste? Well, I would not go that far, but I needed well-wrought words to hold my attention. It was an antidote to daily reading about what was happening in China, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and of course the U.S. I was sick from reading about Covid.

And then the public libraries closed.

It did feel in those early days as if the government used Covid to deny books and knowledge to citizens. That conspiracy theory doesn’t work during a pandemic, but I do read a lot of science fiction, so it crossed my mind. The closing of libraries and schools has been an unfortunate consequence of managing the pandemic. Even for a stay-at-home, staying home gets old.

Somehow we thought the public libraries would stay open, because they are community centers these days. The avid readers, the lonely, the elderly, the poor, and the homeless gather to read newspapers, use the computers, photocopy documents, and borrow books. The library book clubs are the refuge of middle-aged women, and the lectures provide mental stimulation for the “seniors” (now that’s a ghastly sobriquet!). It is also where you pick up your special dark glasses for viewing the eclipse.

And so when they slammed the library doors in mid-March we were shocked. Mind you, I don’t consider librarians social workers, but surely with the appropriate plexiglass barriers, limited browsing, and their many, many self-checkout machines, they could stay open a few hours a day. Okay, curbside pickup was better than nothing. And then the libraries opened again briefly in October. Too briefly. The number of Covid cases and deaths dramatically rose, and they slammed the doors again.

Naturally, we are not completely isolated. We have many books. And we have our blogs, our online book clubs, our Novellas in November and our Women in Translation Months, our Zoom (shudder!), and other virtual substitutes.

But if I lived alone I might indeed go bonkers. So would I have ignored the restrictions and go out? Well, not entirely, but I might have gone shopping more often. I haven’t been to a box store in months. I miss them.

I do envy those writers who don’t believe Covid is dangerous. Some of them think the numbers are nothing! I do think the danger is real, and will continue to wear a mask after I get my vaccine, until the infectious disease experts tell us we’re safe. But guess who’s probably having more fun? The non-believers (unless they get sick, and I hope they do not)!

So Happy New Year! Be safe, stay home, drink your chosen drink (I recommend Darjeeling tea), wash your hands, wear a mask, and celebrate virtually!

2021 will be much better!

Quarantining “Claudius the God”

8 Replies

Book quarantine at Baltimore library.

I stare at a used copy of Claudius the God. I have stared at it for 24 hours. At least it feels like it. I’m waiting for a sign.

I called my cousin the librarian. “When will it be decontaminated?”

“No one dies from reading a book,” she said.

The official library book quarantine time is 72 hours here. Then patrons pick up their library books, and the most careful may quarantine them for another 72 hours. With all that quarantining, there isn’t much time for reading, is there? We’re scared to read our own books.

“Quarantine theory” isn’t my cousin’s department, and she doesn’t have much confidence in her colleagues’ calculations. Although the ALA (American Library Association) site provides links to scientific studies of COVID-19 at the New England Journal of Medicine and the CDC, there is remarkably little information about the virus on paper. The virus lives on cardboard for 24 hours.

So I checked WebMD. It’s where I diagnose all my illnesses (usually correctly). WebMD says of paper like newspapers and mail: “The length of time varies. Some strains of coronavirus live for only a few minutes on paper, while others live for up to 5 days.”

Not very specific, is it?

“Reading Woman on a Couch,” by Isaac Israels

I’ve dutifully stayed home, washed my hands, worn masks at stores, and now I just want to read my book. Is this COVID-fatigue?

According to UCDavis Health, COVID fatigue is born of constant stress and anxiety. And then we get careless about the precautions.

Kaye Hermanson, UC Davis Health psychologist in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. says, “We’re tired of being cooped up, tired of being careful, tired of being scared. Our collective fatigue is making some people careless – one reason COVID-19 is rising sharply again in California and throughout the U.S.”…

“We can help ourselves,” Hermanson said. “We’ve heard this before, but it’s true: It’s time to develop coping skills.” Those include:

Exercise: “It’s the No. 1 best thing we can do for coping,” she said. “Any exercise – even a simple walk – helps. It releases endorphins, gets some of the adrenaline out when the frustration builds up. Just getting out and moving can be really helpful for people.”
Talking: “This really helps, too. Just saying it out loud is important,” Hermanson said. “Find the right places and times, but do it. Ignoring feelings doesn’t make them go away. It’s like trying to hold a beachball underwater – eventually you lose control and it pops out. You can’t control where it goes or who it hits.
Constructive thinking: “We may think it is the situation that causes our feelings, but actually, our feelings come from our thoughts about the situation,” she said. “We can’t change the situation, but we can adjust our thinking. Be compassionate with yourself and others. Remind yourself, ‘I’m doing the best I can.’”
Mindfulness and gratitude: “The more you do this, the easier it gets,” she said. “Try being in the moment. You’re right here, in this chair, breathing and looking around. We put ourselves through a lot of unnecessary misery projecting into the future or ruminating about the past. For now, just take life day by day.”

I’ve decided I will read Claudius the God.

I hope this is as reckless as I get.

Coupons, Coffee, & Quarantine

12 Replies

VISIT THE CAFE FOR 1 FREE TALL STARBUCKS BREWED HOT OR ICED COFFEE!!!

Is this Barnes and Noble coupon the most exciting thing that has happened in months? You would think so. I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a book, and though I suppose I should have quarantined it when I got home, I did not. And the coupon fell out! (The whimsical laws of “quarantined”objects in my home differ from those of the super-hygenic humans.)

For years B&N has given me coupons for a free cookie–perhaps you have to buy a cookie first; I don’t know.

But coffee! If only I’d known the cafe was open. I saw chairs piled on top of tables from afar…

But is drinking coffee at B&N going too far?

I would have taken the coffee outside, of course.

WHY DO I WISH THE LIBRARIES WOULD OPEN? I have amused myself in the last few months by making a list of scholarly books I might like to read. The samples at Amazon have that slightly overstuffed-chair style, as if the writers are afraid they will be mistaken for Georgette Heyer. But you can’t judge a book by its sample.

For $126.99, you can buy Cupid and Psyche: the reception of Apuleius’ Love Story since 1600, edited by Stephen Harrison and Regine May. Apuleius is one of my favorite novelists (yes, there were novels in ancient times), and we’ve all taught the Cupid and Psyche myth. But the public library would never buy this one.

I am also intrigued by Jana Norton’s The Tragic Life Story of Medea as Mother, Monster, and Muse ( $99). I love the title! The description says, “This volume offers a critical yet empathic exploration of the ancient myth of Medea as immortalized by early Greek and Roman dramatists to showcase the tragic forces afoot when relational suffering remains unresolved in the lives of individuals, families and communities…)

And soon I will offer you “a critical yet empathic exploration” of a book I just read.

Happy reading! And have you ventured out to a bookstore yet?

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Thornfield Hall

A Book Blog

Tag Archives: books

The Mysteries of Modern Technology

Like this:

The Way We Live Now

Like this:

What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology

Like this:

Three Books I’ll (Probably) Never Read

Like this:

Head-in-a-Book Shopping Guide: Why Don’t Book Nerds Want a Sweater like Normal People?

Like this:

Fireworks, Gardening, and Gardening Books

Like this:

Tacky Covers: Books from Our Shelves

Like this:

Five Favorite Books of 2020 & A Reader’s Year of Isolation

A Reader’s Year of Isolation

Like this:

Quarantining “Claudius the God”

Like this:

Coupons, Coffee, & Quarantine

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

A Reader’s Year of Isolation

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: