Ian McEwan on books that have shaped his writing and also some about his writing process. I particularly liked what he had to say about welcoming silent periods where you ... Read more
O, parentheses! I have n’er seen you so buttered across the page… The use of parentheses (in addition to parenthetical commas) throughout Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is a point ... Read more
For the most part, the character sketches in The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith, portray characters who are stuck and the writers do not offer the reader ... Read more
I chose to read Man Walks Into A Room by Nicole Krauss because History of Love had stirred me to writerly adoration and because the blurb I read promised a ... Read more
The truth is, March was not one of the books I planned read for this mailing. It’s probably not a book I would have picked up at all on my ... Read more
“But, no matter, the road is life” (211). In my copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac, this line is not just underlined, but circled, no note next to ... Read more
The “Zooey” section of Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger begins thus: The facts at hand presumable speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect, than facts even ... Read more
I borrowed the idea of publishing this list from a friend who shared her list with me. I hope that others will do the same and we’ll all have lots ... Read more
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook is one of my favorite books ever. And so when it came to choosing books to read for this mailing and I came across The ... Read more
`Before I delve into what I observed regarding craft in Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love and the applications of that novel to my own craft, I have to clear ... Read more