Books

I’m discussing Svetlana’s Alexievich’s Secondhand Time with Lori Hirst and Helen Houlle later today. One of the fascinating threads in this oral history is the emphasis on books in Soviet culture…   My mother wasn’t alone,…

Books

I’m discussing Svetlana’s Alexievich’s Secondhand Time with Lori Hirst and Helen Houlle later today. One of the fascinating threads in this oral history is the emphasis on books in Soviet culture…   My mother wasn’t alone,…

A Writer and His Readers

And nothing would make me happier than having made it possible for some of my readers to recognize their own experiences, difficulties, questionings, sufferings, and so on, in mine, and to draw from that realistic…

Libraries

A big library really has the gift of tongues and vast potencies of telepathic communication. Northrop Frye

Wilder Love by April Ulinski

Started rereading The Book of Mev last night. Partially because I needed her reminder that being academic does not mean being disengaged from the world and from the people behind all those ideas. Also because…

Interrupting My Life

Alex Gaynor worked this past year with the Jesuit Volunteers and is currently a campus minister at Saint Joseph University in Philadelphia. She participated in the Be in Love with Yr Life and Writing Rejuvenation…

Worth Reading

Dear Irina, Here are some books that may speak to a few of your questions, interests,  and enthusiasms.  I’ll send more later on if you want…. Mark   Daniel Berrigan, Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift…

Summer Reading, 2009

I recently found this in an old file…   CHINA Annping Chin, The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics David Hinton, Selected Poems of Wang Wei D.C. Lau, trans. Mencius Andrew Plaks, trans.,…

Books I’ve Given to Others

I wrote this for a former student in late 2010, who wanted a list of recommended titles. I decided to give her a list of books I saw fit, for one reason or another, to…