We go insane in this podcast and have a discussion topic for each essay in Michelle Orange’s This Is Running for Your Life. This time, we recorded without Randon on the line, and he reports that this episode had more “Sorry Randons!” per minute than any previous episode. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go. Episode 29 Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).…
Leave a CommentTag: essays
I happened across Brown at the library, and I checked it out because Richard Rodriguez mentioned James Baldwin as an influence. Oh, Richard Rodriguez. You know the way to my heart. When one has picked up a book on account of its having been influenced by someone one loves and admires, it is best not to think about it too much. Think about it too much, and Rodriguez inevitably comes off the worst, as would almost any essayist if you stacked him up next to Baldwin. At times, Rodriguez is beautifully evocative. Some passages are gorgeous: “Her eyes are needles,…
4 CommentsI read this book The Art Prophets, by Richard Polsky, which is a collection of art criticism essays that talk about dealers who discovered and promoted specific genres of art that weren’t necessarily appreciated straightaway. Like Ivan Karp with pop art, or Stan Lee in comics, Virginia Dwan with earthworks, etc. I read it during jury duty. I had a system. I’d read a couple of chapters of Ada, or Ardor, a couple of essays from The Art Prophets, and then I’d read a trashy novel (you don’t need to know details on the last part. Focus on how I…
14 CommentsBefore writing about people writing about parenting, can I say, happy anniversary to my own lovely parents? Happy anniversary, Mumsy & Daddy! Y’all are the best ever! Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon, who are married and writers, both wrote books of essays about parenting and family. I checked them out of the library together. Waldman’s book, Bad Mother, had eighteen chapters and an introduction, and Chabon’s, Manhood for Amateurs, had thirty-nine chapters. So I would basically read a chapter of Bad Mother and then two chapters of Manhood for Amateurs until I had finished them both. This was very pleasing…
34 CommentsWatching the English, Kate Fox I have a confession to make, y’all. I am a sucker for pop psychology, and also pop sociology and yes, pop anthropology. It’s all, you know, it’s all readable, and there are interview excerpts, and people talk about what they think and why they do the things they do. How could anyone not love that? I love that so much! I know that Kate Fox’s Watching the English is observational and subjective and thus Not Proper Science, and maybe it was a tiny smidge repetitive…and yet I do not care. Because it got me all…
43 CommentsStolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq, Zlata Filipovic and Melanie Challenger We had to read Zlata’s Diary in ninth grade, and I remember thinking, Sheesh, if I were Zlata as a grown-up, I would really wish these diaries weren’t out there. They are just like the diaries I kept at that age, lots of Oh why is this happening to me, and How can these trivial things make me happy when there is so much darkness in my life? – the difference being, of course, that she actually had bad stuff happening to me;…
2 CommentsAh, books about books. I read this because I can’t get ahold of Nick Hornby’s much-touted books about books. Anne Fadiman writes about all kinds of aspects of loving books: marrying libraries, loving your books, plagiarism – all kinds of things. I liked some of these essays a lot – the one about marrying libraries made me wince because I could picture myself agonizing over how to organize and sort out my books with someone else’s. I was interested to read an essay from the perspective of a woman who loves books and doesn’t mind destroying them. (I wrote, destroying…
9 Comments