“Everything written down these days and worth reading is oriented towards nostalgia,” one of the characters in Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch declares. How handy to have David Berry’s new book On Nostalgia within reach, to illustrate the enduring interest in the matter, decades later. (Cortázar’s novel was published in Spanish
Have you been on the edge of your seat? The fourth and last of my planned posts on Flannery O’Connor has been delayed (the first, second, and third were published weeks ago) while library transfers were pending. Meanwhile, a new documentary has also been released, although currently only available
Before reading this book, the strongest connotation I had with Kinshasa was its central significance in the co-operative boardgame Pandemic. There are a handful of cities on each continent and players coordinate the strengths of their roles to stop the spread of disease; these days, it’s hardly light entertainment.
O’Connor’s religiosity is inescapable. When she was studying at Iowa, she attended morning mass daily. In her prayer journal, she clearly requests spiritual intervention to guide her craft. While I do not gravitate towards the meditative passages and debates in her letters about her Catholicism – and often skim
Some days I picked up Samar Yazbek’s A Woman in the Crossfire, to read only two pages, and set it aside. Other days I picked it up and forced myself to read a certain number of sections (being that it’s a diary). Afterwards, whether a couple of pages or
