Novelists make assumptions about their readers’ interest in technical details, whether they’re writing about sabotage, romance or philosophy. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is written by a philosophy professor who assumes we want to know the technical details of her two main character’s struggle to find a philosophy of life … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“Tonight the windows hold all light inside: they fold it back on walls…
. . . and spill gold over things that tell us who we are.” This is from “Learning the Language” by Henry Taylor. It’s a beautifully constructed poem that follows strict rules of rhyme and meter. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986, his love of form was … Read More
“It was terribly hot that summer Mr. Robertson left town, and for a long while the river seemed dead.”
What should the first sentence in a great novel do? Set the tone, establish the location and perhaps introduce the main character? The first sentence in Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout does more than that. It gives us the dying river image, which prepares us for the idea … Read More
“Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much.”
This comes from a speech by John F. Kennedy that pays tribute to Robert Frost. He said, “When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concerns, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power … Read More
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deep thing.”
Are poems tools? The 90 contributors to this book think so. They describe how specific poems have helped them. For example, our line this week, from the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, was submitted by a teacher who has those words tattooed on her leg. She writes, “It … Read More
“The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.”
Oh, how I love an unreliable narrator! Our quote is the first sentence of the novel, and it’s clearly a flat-out lie. (The strangest thing about anyone’s return from the dead is that it happened — of course people thought it’s strange.) So, if the main character tells us in … Read More
“We travel, some of us, to slip through the curtain of the ordinary…”
“What is the difference between a self and a soul?”
Why read poetry? If you read novels because you like to find out what happens, and if you read non-fiction because you like to learn something, why read poetry? I read it because I like to think about questions that no one has “the” answer to. I like unsolvable problems. … Read More
“The menu, like love, was full of delicate, gruesome things — cheeks, tongues, thymus glands.”
No writer can make me laugh harder but wince longer than Lorrie Moore. Here is a sample of her humor: “Mike’s friends, however, tended to be tense, intellectually earnest Protestants who drove new, metallic-hued cars and who within five minutes of light conversation could be counted on at … Read More
“Montaigne proved himself a literary revolutionary from the start, writing like no one else. . .”
I’ve always been interested in how writers choose to structure their stories. I was particularly curious about the narrative architecture of this book because it’s a biography about someone who is famous for the revolutionary way he constructed his autobiography. If this author had chosen to describe events chronologically, it … Read More
“There was a sunlit absence.”
“We can’t chose what we want and what we don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth.”
At 771 pages, this is a long novel. Is it worth it? Many of the 57 commentators on the Kirkus review didn’t think so. However, I love the way Tartt develops big themes. And she has sentences that are works of art. The NY Times review, written by Stephen … Read More
“For the most part, we are going about learning in the wrong ways.”
The authors tell us that going over and over something is “a time-consuming study strategy that yields neglibile benefits at the expense of much more effective strategies that take less time.” (15) What works better? Quizzing yourself, or writing a summary paragraph about possible applications, or drawing diagrams, or even … Read More
“Not a week goes by without my telling a lie, but I suppose that is the same for most people.”
Under what circumstances do you lie? This book shows how our tendencies to lie can be influenced by the culture we live in. Kyoko Mori describes situations in her home country of Japan, where it’s more important to be polite than honest, especially with people who have authority over you. … Read More
“Terror and beauty are woven into the fringes of things both great and small.”
I have been drawn to this book by Annie Dillard many times, and I continue to appreciate the ideas and the poetic quality of the prose. My favorite chapter is “Seeing.” For her, seeing leads to understanding, which then leads to transformation. Her closing lines describe being moved by the … Read More