I like books. I don't read them. But I like them.
I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to...
It’s a Buddhist meditation that Teza uses to calm his mind, to put aside not just the physical pain but the sadness and rage he’s feeling: He starts to whisper a prayer. Whatever beings there are, may...
Well, what were your favorite books? When? As a young girl. Nancy Drew. I read dozens of them. I loved the idea of a girl detective.
We’d both already read several novels by Tóibín: The Master and The Story of Night and The Blackwater Lightship.
Feasting the Heart by Reynolds Price,
What does one say to someone who has just been diagnosed with such a dire illness?
The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly.
Trust is all about instinct. If you had all the facts, you wouldn't need trust. Trust is what is required in the absence of proof. But I believe you can strengthen your instincts by testing them; ever...
That’s the point, Will. You can’t control the beatings. But maybe you can have some control over your happiness. As long as he can, well then, he still has something worth living for. And when he’s no...
The new Brooks novel is called People of the Book,
One of the things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they’ll elude you by h...
The truth is that people never realize their lives are about to change in unforeseen ways--that's just the nature of unforeseen ways.
The Bite of the Mango,
I was learning that when you’re with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time. Yet
The poem begins, About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just...
We had chosen as our next book club selection Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, as we’d both loved her 2003 novel The Namesake and her first book of stories, Interpr...
Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, writes Kabat-Zinn. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and accep...
I did manage to read some pages from a book that’s also about how people can find strength they didn’t know they had. What book was that? The Book of Common Prayer, Mom answered. Didion? No, Will. Mom...
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, had just been published. The other was a Pulitzer Prize–winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout,
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