The list I made last November with #NovNov in mind is a snapshot of an ambitious reader’s brain, high on bookish possibilities. You recognise the vague outlines that persist, when one is away from one’s bookshelves but in a planning mood, unbound. The titles listed in black are all
It is the way of things that, in the week I was reading and writing about Audre Lorde’s first essay in Sister Outsider, I met her in another book too. In “The History of Black People” from Magical Negro (2019), Morgan Parker writes: “If you cut open my heart,
This regular feature on BIP altered during the past year; my favourite on-the-move notebook sprouted a layer of dust because now that I’m consistently sitting at my desk, I often choose to key my notes directly rather than handwrite. For rereading, I still appreciate handwritten notes; that way, I’m
This year I added another writer to my MRE list. In truth, he was one of the writers whose stories provoked that kind of MustReadEverything commitment early on, but I didn’t have a word for it yet. Authors who told the kind of stories that I wanted on my
I reread Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret (which I didn’t properly appreciate as a young reader) in April, to write a pair of essays for the Literary Ladies site, hosted by Nava Atlas, author of (among other books) The Literary Ladies’ Guide to the Literary Life (2011).
