I’ve muddled Frenchman’s Creek (1941) and Jamaica Inn for years. That’s why I started watching the 2014 mini-series of Jamaica Inn because I thought I’d read the book already; but, I hadn’t, so I stopped watching after the first episode. Now, at last, a great reason to sort out
O’Connor’s religiosity is inescapable. When she was studying at Iowa, she attended morning mass daily. In her prayer journal, she clearly requests spiritual intervention to guide her craft. While I do not gravitate towards the meditative passages and debates in her letters about her Catholicism – and often skim
Shortly after I was old enough to peruse the magazines and newspapers that came to the houses of older family members, I discovered the wonders of the Columbia House Record Company and the Quality Paperback Bookclub via their advertisements. Both of these catalogue businesses offered tantalizing deals to new
It’s easy to allow one’s world to get smaller, when one is overwhelmed by some of the sadness and struggle in this world; the opposite is also true, that it’s easy to expand your world under the same set of circumstances. A random spark, like this desk calendar by
My planning for a year’s reading always involves looking back at the previous reading year. In 2019, I’d planned to focus on series reading. In the previous year, 25% of my reading had revolved around various series, moving ahead or finishing. In 2019, only 18 of the books I
