Witness: Carol Shields’ Happenstance and The Stone Diaries

2020-12-27T14:27:37-05:00

The call for witnesses in The Stone Diaries resonates throughout Shields’ work: “Life is an endless recruiting of witnesses. It seems we need to be observed in our postures of extravagance or shame, we need attention paid to us. Our own memory is altogether too cherishing, which is the

Witness: Carol Shields’ Happenstance and The Stone Diaries2020-12-27T14:27:37-05:00

Rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1988)

2020-12-27T14:27:22-05:00

Rereading Cat’s Eye while rereading Rosemary Sullivan’s biography of Margaret Atwood emphasized the parallels between the narrator’s and author’s childhoods. I was a teenager when I read Cat’s Eye for the first time; I would have had no idea that Elaine’s childhood of lakes and insects was Peggy’s childhood

Rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye (1988)2020-12-27T14:27:22-05:00

Two Summer Debuts: Swimming and Malt Shops

2020-07-21T15:44:18-04:00

When variations on the 30-something-°-day populate the ten-day forecast, summer reading is ON. (That’s 80s and 90s, for those of us who still get hotter in °F.) Books like Daven McQueen’s The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones and Taylor Hale’s The Summer I Drowned rise to the top of

Two Summer Debuts: Swimming and Malt Shops2020-07-21T15:44:18-04:00

Moving from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Testaments #MARM

2019-11-20T12:43:07-05:00

There are three things that I noticed in this rereading of The Handmaid’s Tale. The use of time in the narrative. The importance of what is not said. The matter of world-building and perspective. In all three, readers are wholly engaged. Engaged in the use of time, in the

Moving from The Handmaid’s Tale to The Testaments #MARM2019-11-20T12:43:07-05:00

Overflow for #1965Club Reading

2019-05-03T11:51:34-04:00

When you have 8,409 books on your TBR list, the smallest detail can boost a handful of them to the top of the stack. Which feels tremendously specific. And terrifically random. So when Karen and Simon chose 1965 as their next reading year inspiration, a few books presented themselves

Overflow for #1965Club Reading2019-05-03T11:51:34-04:00
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