Stage fright
My parents put us in dance classes when I was four. At my first recital, I walked out on stage, clad in my red sequins and some messy feather headpiece, ready to dance to “76 Trombones.” But then I looked … Continue reading
Tag Archives: books
The Next Big Thing: Gemstones edition
Years ago (five, maybe? Who can remember?) I took a day-long writing workshop from MediaBistro. I was toiling with my first YA (now one of those books-in-a-drawer everyone talks about) and just needed some focus, and the class was helpful. … Continue reading
My year in books
When I was about 15, I met someone who kept a reading journal, listing every book she’s ever read and a sentence or two summing up her feelings about each one. She wasn’t smug about it, but she had every … Continue reading
On this rainy Friday
I dreamt of lying on benches, waiting for trains, with quotes circling the air like thought bubbles I could reach out and touch. I fell asleep feeling guilty about how the days pass so quickly; sometimes it will be dinnertime … Continue reading
Gimme a…
“Where’d that world go, that world where you’re a kid, and now I can’t remember noticing anything, not the smell of the leaves or the sharp curl of a dried maple on your ankles, walking? I live in cars now, … Continue reading
On hard books
This is a serious post: how difficult should books be to read? I think back to my college days (English major here), where I was reading for hours a day — Dosteovsky and Coleridge and Rich, Melville and Dillard and … Continue reading
What’s on your nightstand?
I try to check in with The Hairpin regularly, and today this post about The Secret History caught my eye. (Oh, apparently it’s actually on The Awl. It’s cross-posted, I swear!) For starters, what a great book, right? But this … Continue reading
I was okay until…
Yesterday I flipped open a New Yorker essay by Jonathan Franzen about Edith Wharton and “her problem of sympathy,” and I thought, How I love this magazine, and Edith, and this literary life. A moment later my attention was diverted … Continue reading
Today, in Things I Can’t Get Enough Of: The Secret Circle, and season reads
“Planets are gathering at the key north, south, east, and west angles of your chart, and those are considered to be highly energetic points.” Here is an excerpt from my horoscope this month. (Truly, read Susan Miller. She is amazing.) … Continue reading
The requisite post about banned books
I used to sneak into my big sister’s room to steal two things: her Seventeen magazines and her VC Andrews books. I laugh now, really, at how different those two types of reading are, and yet at the time — … Continue reading