the history of love

[thankful for a book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 5 days left]

when i was a boy i liked to write. it was the only thing i wanted to do with my life. i invented imaginary people and filled notebooks with their stories. i wrote about a boy who grew up and got so hairy people wanted him for his fur. he had to hide in the trees, and he fell in love with a bird who thought she was a three-hundred-pound gorilla.

that’s all it took. a few sentences and i craved and feasted and sighed on the history of love. it is perfect. absolutely perfect.

the reviews, however, on krauss’s book were mixed, to say the least. and you’ll find most people tipping against it. i have no idea what’s wrong with those people. if my house was on fire, i would take the history of love.

is it in your 72 hour kit?

[ps - you still have ample time to finish housekeeping by marilynne robinson for our book group, the book trail, on nov. 30.]

the magician’s nephew

[thankful for a book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 6 days left]

of course c.s. lewis’s chronicles of narnia must make this list. these books worked their way so deeply into my imagination that i still check for hidden worlds at the back of wardrobes.

of the series, i found the magician’s nephew the most startling. this is the context for narnia–and though the new-fangled boxed sets have you read this one first, i still prefer it at the end of the series as a delicious, delicious surprise.

[ps - i hope you’ve all started housekeeping by marilynne robinson for our book group, the book trail.]

writing with style

[thankful for a book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 7 days left]

reading a book about writing can actually help you write better.

for some reason, as a sophomore in college and novice writing tutor, this was an epiphanic moment. read this book, it’s true. and trimble’s is one of the most readable texts on writing around.

[yes! you too can start sentences with “and” … ]

richard III

[thankful for a book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 8 days left]

it is strange, i guess, that the shakespearian play i am most overwhelmed and moved by isn’t king lear or romeo and juliet or the tempest, it’s richard III. historical inaccuracies aside, richard’s character fascinates me. so very evilly evil.

and it was here, as i tried to understand the medieval link between deformed body and deformed mind (you’ll remember that richard has a gimp arm), that i stumbled onto a literary theory that changed the way i communicate and understand communication: speech act theory. (for those of you who are endlessly curious, here’s a link to a fairly easy to understand synopsis of j.l. austin’s original book.)

combine speech act theory, richard III, and the neverending story (don’t assume here that you’ll read anything like that off-hand, stiff-as-mud movie they made) and you’ll have a mind-bogglingly amazing weekend.

i capture the castle

[book-a-day advent to thanksgiving: 9 days left]

i love love love this book.

(so i’ve loved loved loved all the books this month. but if i was stranded on a desert island and i was feeling particularly girly and i just needed a romance, i would smuggle this book under my shirt, along with rope, matches, and other such surviverly things — plus some gerard manley hopkins and a little bit of ee cummings. but now i’m getting greedy.)

cassandra mortmain is one of the most compelling and intoxicating narrators out of the mid-twentieth century. her first line is perhaps the best around,

i write this sitting in the kitchen sink. that is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which i have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.

the characters are delightful. the plot unpredictable. the crushes spine-tingling. the outcome unexpected. the writing fresh and invigorating. i cannot love this book enough. just writing about it makes me want to read it again …
(is this the fifth or sixth time … ?)