Last week, my husband and I were engaged in our usual bedtime routine, he eating a bowl of cereal and me watching the darkness creep across the yard and imagining worst case scenarios, when I asked him, “What if we both die of COVID at the same time? What will happen to the farm?”
Read moreCrime and Punishment
When I was sixteen, I spent a month canoeing with a bunch of juvenile delinquents from New York. This was through a program called Outward Bound, which I had signed up for of my own volition. They, on the other hand, had been sent to the boundary waters of Minnesota by a judge who ordered “wilderness training” as an alternative to juvie jail.
My group of young criminals included a skinny dude with a peach-fuzz chin and lifeless eyes, a cruel rich boy and his toady sidekick, and a big shaggy guy who looked and sounded like Jack Nicholson. The four of them were horribly mean to me and the other two women, and when I wasn’t cowering from their bullying, I was plotting ways to get even.
Read moreHourglass: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro
I've just finished the memoir, "Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage," by Dani Shapiro. It is a tiny book -- the pages laid out with shockingly wide margins -- but does it ever pack a punch. Which is surprising given that Shapiro describes what many of us are living: the vague blandness of waking up next to the same person every morning, years on end. She and her husband "M." love each other. There is no dysfunction, and the drama is the kind you can't escape in life -- accidents and illnesses, ailing parents, career disappointment.
Read moreReading in Bed: Three Books that Span a Lifetime
That's me in the photograph. It's the day after Thanksgiving and I'm spending the morning in bed with a great book and a cup of Earl Grey. Heaven. I might look a little fuzzy and out of focus but you would too if you had just made three gallons of turkey gravy.
You can't see the title in the photo, but the book I'm reading is one I stole from my fourteen-year-old niece. She might be my new reading soulmate. We were on vacation, pontooning on Green Bay, and I recognized a fellow book nerd when she showed up with a dogeared paperback in hand. All afternoon, she tolerated me leaning over her shoulder until finally, she handed over the book. A generous gesture.
Read moreThe Best Books I've Read the Past Twenty Years: Part One
Beginning in 1995, I recorded the title, author, and short blurb of every book I read. The best books got stars. I was picky about awarding them.
This act of journaling corresponded with the start of my job at the local library where I was paid actual cash for the task of reading books and recommending them to others.
Read moreThree Books Worth Reading
I used to work in the adult fiction room at a suburban library -- the greatest job I ever held. It was better even than working as a counselor at a French camp where I received $200 a week for making moon eyes at a guy named Jean-Michel from Winnipeg. At the library, I brewed coffee, compiled reading lists, led a monthly book discussion, recommended titles to patrons, and never ceased to be amazed that every ten days, someone handed me a check for such "labor."
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