My Own Private Book Club
Not as good as a book - it makes a very poor doorstop.
About Me
- The Nag
- Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada
- My virtue is that I say what I think, my vice that what I think doesn't amount to much.
Sunday, March 10, 2024
Learning To Move On
Friday, March 08, 2024
Transcending: Words on Women and Strength by Kelly Corrigan
On International Women’s Day, a repost from 2008,
Sunday, March 03, 2024
Mimesis by Fady Joudah
wouldn’t hurt a spider
That had nested
Between her bicycle handles
For two weeks
She waited
Until it left of its own accord
If you tear down the web I said
It will simply know
This isn’t a place to call home
And you’d get to go biking
She said that’s how others
Become refugees isn’t it?
Friday, March 01, 2024
A Letter from E.B.White
Letter to his editor, Eugene Saxton
1st March 1939
Herewith an unfinished MS of a book called Stuart Little. It would seem to be for children, but I’m not fussy who reads it. You said you wanted to look at this, so I am presenting it thus in its incomplete state. There are about ten or twelve thousand words so far, roughly.
You will be shocked and grieved to discover that the principal character in the story has somewhat the attributes and appearance of a mouse. This does not mean that I am either challenging or denying Mr. Disney’s genius. At the risk of seeming a very whimsical fellow indeed, I will have to break down and confess to you that Stuart Little appeared to me in dream, all complete, with his hat, his cane, and his brisk manner. Since he was the only fictional figure ever to honor and disturb my sleep, I was deeply touched, and felt that I was not free to change him into a grasshopper or a wallaby. Luckily he bears no resemblance, either physically or temperamentally, to Mickey. I guess that’s a break for all of us.
(From Letters of E. B. White)
Twelve Moons - Mary Oliver
1
In March the earth remembers its own name.
Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.
The rivers begin to sing. In the sky
the winter stars are sliding away; new stars
appear as, later, small blades of grain
will shine in the dark fields.
And the name of every place
is joyful.
2
The season of curiosity is everlasting
and the hour for adventure never ends,
but tonight
even the men who walked upon the moon
are lying content
by open windows
where the winds are sweeping over the fields,
over water,
over the naked earth,
into villages, and lonely country houses, and the vast cities
3
because it is spring;
because once more the moon and the earth are eloping -
a love match that will bring forth fantastic children
who will learn to stand, walk, and finally run
over the surface of earth;
who will believe, for years,
that everything is possible.
4
Born of clay,
how shall a man be holy;
born of water,
how shall a man visit the stars;
born of the seasons,
how shall a man live forever?
5
Soon
the child of the red-spotted newt, the eft,
will enter his life from the tiny egg.
On his delicate legs
he will run through the valleys of moss
down to the leaf mold by the streams,
where lately white snow lay upon the earth
like a deep and lustrous blanket
of moon-fire,
6
and probably
everything
is possible.
Monday, February 26, 2024
Pete and Alice in Maine
The Wren, The Wren
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright is the second inter-generational Irish novel I’ve read this year. The thread that ties three generations of women together is a drunken philandering poet, Phil McDaragh, who is the pride of his countrymen and adored internationally. He abandoned his dying wife, who had been his muse, and his two young daughters, Imelda and Carmel, to seek fame and fortune in America. This desertion happened long before Carmel’s daughter, Nell, was born but has had a negative impact on her as well. Phil is dead but his legacy of emotional traumatization lives on. The story is told from the perspectives of Carmel and Nell with a brief, self-serving interjection from Phil.
Carmel and Nell have a complicated relationship and their relationships with others are just as fraught. Carmel is a single parent by choice, to avoid her own mother’s fate. Carmel does not know how to express her deep love for her daughter and Nell becomes enmeshed in a masochistic relationship which only ends when the abuser abandons her. But in the end Nell appears to be on her way to escaping the chains of her history.
With this new novel Anne Enright cements her reputation as one of the great living writers.
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Saturday, February 03, 2024
A Poem by Steve Bellin-Oka
Packing the Kitchen Utensils
How many years since we used
the potato masher, the apple peeler,
its stainless-steel blade and crank
tucked in the back of the bottom
kitchen drawer among the balled
clot of discarded rubber bands?
And the egg slicer, never touched,
its grille and clean wires taut
as the silver foil outlines
of the invitations we mailed out
years ago? We bought these
utensils ourselves: hardly anyone
came to a gay wedding back then.
Which of you is the bride? someone
scrawled beneath the box checked
“decline.” At least they answered,
you said. Husband, I lift two nesting
spoons from the cutlery drawer,
wrap them in a grocery circular.
Though their silver oval faces
are tarnished with wear, on the handles
you can still make out the brand,
the words Lifetime Guarantee.
by Steve Bellin-Oka
from Split This Rock
Friday, February 02, 2024
A Plug For Frank Bruni’s Love Of Sentences
In his newsletter The Loaf, Tim Kreider rued the self-trivialization of onetime titans. “I saw Hunter S. Thompson — once an important writer to me — speak after he’d become a professional Hunter S. Thompson impersonator: He sat onstage holding boozily forth drinking Chivas Regal and whacking things with a rubber squeak-toy mallet,” he wrote. “It was like seeing an animal that once could’ve skwapped your head off with one paw dressed in a tutu and riding a unicycle.” (Barbara K. Lane, Kings Park, N.Y.)
You can sign up here.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
My Doggy Ate My Essay
Saturday, January 27, 2024
The Bee Sting
This novel by Paul Murray tells the story of a well to do family in a small town in Ireland who have fallen on rough times when the car dealership that has been their source of wealth starts losing money during the recession. The family consists of Dickie Barnes who runs the business, his beautiful wife Imelda, their daughter Cassie who is awaiting her acceptance to Trinity College and their 12-year-old son who is bewildered by the acrimony engulfing his family. It’s a long novel that takes an eternity to unfold with frequent flashbacks. None of the characters are what they initially appear to be and new characters are introduced at regular intervals to make things even more confusing. No one is happy. Everyone is scared. People do things they regret. The last part of the book builds slowly to what we are sure will be a conflagration. I enjoyed many parts of the story but, at 700 pages, The Bee Sting was too long and I found the ending to be unsatisfactory.
(This book was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize)
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Two-Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin
Bears Discover Fire - A Short Story By Terry Bisson
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Letter written on this day
Snow means such special things to me. It means a fat soft plop, plop, as it is shovelled off the roofs and falls into the courtyard below. It means the strange melancholy halloo by which the deer are called to be fed, and which brings them bounding from all corners of the park. It means these things in an intimate way, like the ticking of the clock in one's own room means something; and is part of one.
Vita Sackville-West
Letter to Virginia Woolf
17th January 1926
(From The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf)