Last week Maurice Sendak died, inspiring a rash of Sendak tributes across the internet, many of them incorporating characters from his most well-known work, Where the Wild Things Are. Unlike many authors of books from my childhood, Sendak was still alive during my lifetime, and had been involved in the movie made from his most [...]
Posts Tagged ‘literature’
Birthday, Books, Max
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged family, literature on May 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Henry and me
Posted in Home, literature, tagged literature on November 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I recently finished reading Washington Square by Henry James. It’s one of his earlier novels and tells the story of Catherine Sloper, a quiet, plain, and not particularly bright young woman who struggles to reconcile the wills of her ne’er-do-well suitor and her overbearing physician father. Money, of course, is also heavily involved. I’ve never [...]
The past is everywhere
Posted in history, tagged literature, national_parks on April 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
…Or at least it seems that way lately. First it was watching the movie Thunderheart, which I seem to get a hankering to see every few years: all that footage of the South Dakota badlands reminds me so sharply of my days there as a seasonal park ranger in my early 20′s. Then there was [...]
Oh, the humanities!
Posted in literature, tagged library, literature on May 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Last week marked a period in the academic quarter that I’ve begun to look forward to. It’s the week when many of the humanities classes on campus require the students to come to the library and pick out an item to study individually. Depending on the class, they might be searching for a novel, a [...]
The Lacuna
Posted in literature, tagged literature on February 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Barbara Kingsolver has turned her hand to many Big Concepts throughout her writing career, and her latest novel is no exception. Whether the topic is interracial adoption, the ethics of the human relationship to the natural world, or the moral ramifications of Christian missionaries in third-world countries, Kingsolver can wrap it up in a scrumptious [...]
Random Coincidences
Posted in literature, tagged literature, serendipity on November 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A couple days ago, on Veteran’s Day, to be exact, I was walking with Joda, absorbed in some long literary reverie that concluded with the thought that I wanted to read The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West. I was supposed to read it about 15 years ago for a seminar I took in [...]
Heidi
Posted in literature, tagged literature on February 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I just re-read one of my favorite childhood novels, Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. It was fun to immerse myself in the simple world of nature in the beautiful Swiss alps, following Heidi’s pleasure in following the herd of goats up to the meadow, gawking at the carpet of wildflowers, and watching the sun kiss the [...]
