What Writers Read
All writers read, of course. I’ve always assumed that they read often, steadily, efficiently, and with pleasure. But on reflection, I wonder. Is it necessarily the case? Do they read more, or differently from...
Author: nannyrhops
The Housekeeping Gene
A few days ago I googled “housekeeping,” probably hoping to find something interesting or meaningful about my own old, dull resistance to basic maintenance, that is, washing, dusting, sweeping, repairing — the details need...
Proust and the Squid: Book Review
Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, London: Icon 2008. It is a great title! In the end, though, I decided the title applied — lightly — to just...
Reading Genesis: book review
Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis, London: Virago, 2024. Can the writer of this very closely-argued, scholarly study be the same Marilynne Robinson we’ve some to know and, at least in my own case, to profoundly...
Book Review: Black Elk Speaks
Rating books is always reductive, unfair: it flattens a full-fledged, 3D experience into a less than a line…just 5 dots! Rating this one is particularly absurd, like passing judgement on the New Testament or...
Mild Vertigo: Book Review
Mieko Kanai: Mild Vertigo (translator, Polly Barton), London: Fitzarraldo, 2023. I found many reasons to admire it. Prime among them was the consistency of language — and translation — that makes it possible for...