Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
I'm currently reading Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, translated by Anne Carson, and thinking about theater and playwriting.
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness and Recommended V-Day Reading
I just finished Daniel Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness and now I'm finishing up My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead, a love story anthology edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (in time for Valentine's Day).
"Months and Seasons" by Christopher Meeks
Christopher Meeks' new short story collection, Months and Seasons, has become a sort of grassroots movement, a favorite of small press reviewers, bloggers, and veteran Amazon junkies. The slim volume of thirteen stories (plus an excerpt from his upcoming novel as a "bonus track") is uneven, sometimes awkward, but redeemed again and again by the …
On the Art of Life and Vice Versa
Today I started reading Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa and I've liked it so much that I've more or less finished it in an afternoon. I just finished the short story collection Stories from the Afterlife, by Quinn Dalton, and up next is Gail Jones' Dreams of …
Natasha’s Dance
I just started Orlando Figes' excellent Natasha's Dance: The Cultural History of Russia
Untold Stories
Untold Stories is the collected memoirs, diaries, and notes of Alan Bennett, best known as the writer of The Madness of King George and a long-time presence in British theater.
Empress by Shan Sa
As the sole woman to occupy a throne at the meeting point of heaven and earth, this extraordinary personage is perhaps a perfect fit for Shan Sa’s grandiose writing style.
The Week You Weren’t Here by Charles Blackstone
I read The Week You Weren't Here while getting my nails done. I read it on the taxi ride home, glancing down at the page through patches of streetlight. I read it over dinner until my boyfriend asked me whether the book was good and I had no idea what to say.
Fernanda Eberstadt
Though Little Money Street is obviously affectionate, Fernanda Eberstadt does not deny that Gypsy society is marked by widespread illiteracy, poverty, and startling sexual inequalities.
Rituals of Mourning
I just finished reading Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. In 2003, Didion's daughter fell suddenly ill with pneumonia, leading to septic shock that was eventually fatal. On December 23 of the same year, Didion's husband of forty years died suddenly of a heart attack. The situation described above, while doubtless tragic, would …