Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm […]
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Book-y Things
posted by Stacy
Like two other of my fellow Lettered Ladies, my research and teaching interests involve many aspects of Book Studies and Book Arts – publication history and medium, issues of authorship and readership, even variant book covers and title pages. My students know me as the professor interested in “book-y things” (my own sophisticated, academic term). […]
August
27
On Homesickness and Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic
posted by Kate Krueger
Most of the time, there is a veritable ocean of territory between where I am now and my childhood home. I am often struck by homesickness, a tilt in my gut. I strain to see snow and evergreen but come up against moss and magnolia instead. Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic was the last book I picked […]
August
22
What Laura is Reading Now
posted by Laura
Years ago, I was listening to an episode of This American Life when I heard a segment — and a voice — that I will never forget. It was my first encounter with David Rakoff. Part of an episode on “Frenemies,” the segment — a fictional wedding toast-in-verse given by the bride’s ex-boyfriend — was […]
Summer Reading
posted by Stacy
As a college professor, I enjoy my “time off” in the summer – or, rather, my time to actually get some work done that doesn’t involve grading papers and going to meetings. I enjoy the slower pace, warmer weather, and Farmers Market veggies as I revise articles and read for upcoming classes. I also love […]
August
16
Verklempt
posted by Lynne Nugent
Herewith, three picture books that have made me, an emotional new-ish mother, secretly choke up a little while reading them aloud to my son. Not because they make me sad, but because they make me happy. Yep, it’s like that around here. And in the case of the first of them, I get misty every […]
August
14
Best Books of All Time?
posted by Stacy
Last week, I came upon this article: “40 Books to Read Before Turning 40”. I jokingly sent it to my boyfriend – currently enjoying his last few months in his 30s – and noted that he “has a lot of reading to do.” The books on the list are certainly some I’d recommend to anyone […]
August
05
Eleanor and Park
posted by Laura
I originally hail from outside of Omaha, Nebraska, so when I recently read about a YA novel by one-time columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, Rainbow Rowell, my curiosity was piqued. And when I learned that it was also set in Omaha, my intentions to read it were sealed. Omaha does not often play the backdrop […]
August
02
I Capture the Castle
posted by Lynne Nugent
Despite considering myself an Anglophile, I was somehow unaware of Dodie Smith’s 1949 novel I Capture the Castle until recently, when Jen W., a member of my book group, told the rest of us in the most strenuous terms that we must read it immediately. I quickly learned why it is capable of generating such […]
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