December 12, 2009
Season’s Readings
When I told a friend I was moving to Michigan, she replied, “Get four coats.” This was temperature-related advice, I think (it’s eleven degrees at the moment) — but, had […]
October 20, 2009
Something Old, Something Underground, or, I’m Beginning to See the Light
As part of my ongoing attempt to turn back the calendar to 1985, I recently bought a turntable. That means I can finally listen to records that I’ve lugged all […]
September 19, 2009
Comedy and Context
A few days ago I listened to Dean Young give a reading at the University of Michigan’s Helmut Stern Auditorium. Dressed in drainpipe jeans and a Western-style plaid shirt, Young […]
September 13, 2009
“Which three books would you have taken?”
In Parade Magazine several weeks ago, a reader asked why his tax dollars were going to support a poet laureate of the U.S. when no one reads poetry anymore. Never […]
September 11, 2009
Surprise, Delight, McIntoshes, Bike Rides and THE BIG READ
Just yesterday I was welcoming 25 new KR Associates into the fold. This is the largest group of volunteers we’ve ever taken on, from the largest group of applications–nearly 70. […]
July 1, 2009
Sack Book Publicists, Every Last One
In my younger and more vulnerable years I believed that we spoke about books because books had meaning. They possessed forces as integral to our reality as gravity and weather. […]
May 28, 2009
Audiobooks and the Road
One of the compensations for my new hour-long commute from Columbus to Gambier has been the chance to listen to a considerable number of audiobooks on my iPod. (I can […]
May 26, 2009
They Weren’t Booing, They Were Shouting “Muldoon!”
But for a badly timed heart attack — and the suspicion that if a Bainbridge Island swimming pool (now sand garden) hadn’t gotten him, something else would have — Theodore […]
May 17, 2009
Screen reading update
Ina Howard-Parker’s show Open Book has debuted. Each episode, she travels to a place and explores the literary history behind it (including lots of author interviews). The Kindle DX was […]
May 5, 2009
What I Read Under the Sun, Or, a Meditation On Place
Ultimately, I decided that vacation reading benefits most from variety. So I packed four books–paperbacks all–that spanned four genres. Mystery, literary fiction, poetry, and religious nonfiction. The uncanny thing about […]
April 22, 2009
What To Read Under the Sun?
First there’s the matter of upping the ante. Reading should always be pleasurable. But reading on vacation should–one supposes–be doubly pleasurable. After all, one is on vacation. No one’s looking […]
April 19, 2009
What is the value of digital access?
Last night in the midst of a debate over the value of women’s bodies in modern art, I realized that the debate surrounding digital publishing has isolated itself from discourse […]