Although it has spent a solid couple of years languishing on my bedside table, I finally picked up Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot a few days ago. If I’ve done anything else the last few days, it has only been reluctantly, since this is a book I have despaired putting down and parting with, even […]
Author Archives: Laura
What are you reading this summer?
posted by Laura
I have started so many posts for this blog in my head over the past few months. A post about My Age of Anxiety, which I actually finished ages ago and would probably have to reread at this point to properly write about. A post about Mary Szybist’s Incarnadine and another about Leslie Jamison’s The […]
April
20
Engraving in the 21st Century
posted by Laura
When asked if I would review the new textbook on engraving, Design to Touch, written by Rose Gonnella and Erin Smith and published by the International Engraved Graphics Association (IEGA), I of course leapt at the chance. As someone enchanted by letterpress printing, I am equally fascinated by its sister art. Physically, the processes are […]
February
14
Love & Poetry
posted by Laura
In honor of today, my favorite love poem: number six from Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my […]
January
17
Speechless: Part II
posted by Laura
When I heard Lynne was writing a post about wordless picture books, I knew I had to write a piggy-back post. I fell in love with wordless picture books when my girls were old enough to handle books but a long way from being able to memorize and recite them. While board books and picture […]
January
13
Lettered Ladies Book Club: Tolstoy and the Purple Chair
posted by Laura
I still can’t believe that Nina Sankovitch did what she did. Reading a 250-300 page book every day — and then writing about it! — for an entire year seems frankly impossible to me. Truly it does. Lettered Lady Kate could totally do this. She sacrifices no comprehension at all for her enviable speed, which […]
December
12
Hunkering Down with Holiday Picture Books
posted by Laura
Down in our basement, along with the Christmas ornaments and tree skirt and advent calendars and various other household decorations, we keep a very special box labeled “Christmas Books.” A while back, I decided that this stash would go away for eleven months of the year so that come December, these books would feel fresh […]
November
20
Giddy to Talk Kids’ Books
posted by Laura
As a compulsive book buyer who likes to maintain a relatively uncluttered household, there are few things I love more than getting recommendations about books that will be worthy of taking up prime bookshelf real estate. So when I saw that my local bookstore, Prairie Lights, was hosting a talk about children’s book recommendations, I […]
November
17
When Women Were Birds
posted by Laura
What seems like an age ago, I was in an environmental nonfiction class in which I was assigned Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams. A memoir chronicling the rising of Great Salt Lake alongside the disturbing deaths from cancer of several of the women in Williams’s family, including her mother, it is an interrogation, on one […]
Moonlight
posted by Laura
Moonlight Sara Teasdale It will not hurt me when I am old. A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks. The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is […]
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