Over deep dish pizza on New Year’s Day, our friend Dan proudly mentioned that in 2023, he actually read the number of books he had resolved to read. The number was impressive – 42! – considering he is a hands-on dad of two young kids (though not as young as my baby) and works full-time.
Continue reading “Seven books and a baby”
Before getting pregnant, I first had to remove the copper goalie in my cervix, which by the way, I highly recommend to those looking for hormone-free birth control. I did this in Washington D.C., a few months after our wedding, at one of OneMedical’s light-and-plant-filled modern offices. I met with a friendly, young female doctor who had no children herself, but who had done some reading on the topic. Continue reading “Good Books to Read While Pregnant (or Not Pregnant)”
On Sunday afternoon, I watched Call Me By Your Name and left the theater weeping.* Not because I left feeling hopeless, but simply nostalgic, for old lessons and old times. Continue reading ““Call Me By Your Name” and the Heartbreak I’ve Never Had”
Back in 2013 I revisited The Great Gatsby for the first time since sophomore year of high school.
The point was to tell the handful of people who read this blog that at twenty-seven, I now had a better grasp of the novel than I did at fifteen. Continue reading “Revisiting some General Resolves à la Jimmy Gatsby”
Last night, in a bout of writer’s block/what am I doing with my life despair, (after spending the evening complaining to Tom about not writing and then watching two hours of Sci-Fi TV (“The Expanse”), I logged onto the New York Public Library website and downloaded two books to my Kindle: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami.
Continue reading “Two great books for when you’re feeling down and useless”
Came across this essay in the Financial Times by Alain de Botton on how fictional representations of love can potentially ruin the real thing.
I didn’t date until I was 25, mostly because my years before were filled with crushes on celebrities and fictional characters ranging from Edward Norton to Anime cartoons. I’ve come a long way…I think, except for the moments during certain arguments with Tom, when I backtrack and think, “If Tom and I are meant for each other, why are we having another argument about _(insert topic here, involving anything from domestic inanities to personal values).”
Because, as Botton points out, very few people are “meant” for each other.
“…for most of us, our life’s problem isn’t finding a partner (that’s just one very important and at points thrilling phase), it is tolerating the candidate one eventually finds, and being tolerated by them, over time.
“A wiser culture than ours would recognize that the start of a relationship is not the high point that romantic art assumes; it is merely the first step of a far longer, more ambivalent and yet quietly audacious journey on which we should direct our intelligence and scrutiny.”
Makes sense to me, which is why I like Botton and why I’m marking my calendar to preorder his new book, an un-Romantic novel, The Course of Love, out on June 14th.
Two years and forever ago, I took a “master class” with Zoe Heller, who wrote What Was She Thinking: Notes On a Scandal which was then adapted into a movie I loved called Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench. Continue reading “What I’m Reading: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.”
If it weren’t for my friends, I wouldn’t be very well-read.
When I was visiting home last month, my friend Erica stopped by to visit, holding Americanah by Chimamanda Ngoszi Adichie.
“I brought this for you,” she said, “I think you’ll like it.” Continue reading “What I’m Reading: Americanah”
I wanted to share how my thesis review went and then realized… in a way, I already did it five years ago. I mentioned here that the actual meeting went well, but only because when you’re sitting in front of the professors, it’s hard for them to say, as was implied in their written comments, “Well, it was just awful.” Continue reading “A Writer Like Cheever”
It rained really hard last Friday evening. I was writing at the kitchen table and looked up to see the window suddenly splattered with rain. “Look at the weather, Thom,” I said, “It’s crazy.” Continue reading “Thom’s Thursday Thoughts”
VERY HIGHBROW 