Adjective: Picaresque: 1. relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero. Noun: Picaresque novel: A novel relating the story of such a character. The picaresque is not a new thing. Famous novels in this vein include Tom Jones, Huckleberry Finn, and, the granddaddy of […]
I don’t often read books about Being a Writer. Because you know I’m above all that, ha ha ha. At least I used to think I was. But Bird by Bird is famous among writers, a book that everyone at writer’s group has heard of. Of course I didn’t rush out to read it. Because
Book review: The Year of magical thinking by Joan Didion. I loved this book, which is strange when you realize that the subject itself is dark: it concerns the sudden death of Didion’s husband, John Dunne, after nearly 40 years of marriage. Despite the tragic subject matter, reading it became, for me, not a guilty
Although writing contests have long charged entry fees, and this is considered justified because it’s a contest and there are significant prizes to be won, submitting your work to various journals used to be uniformly free. Now in the last ten years, more and more literary magazines are charging writers to submit to their regular
The Sound of Gravel Book Review: It’s dark outside and in the beginning of The Sound of Gravel. The polygamous cult in which Wariner is raised, 200 miles south of Juarez, Mexico, is a land of rural beauty and grinding poverty. Living off the land is not exactly working for the 30-odd families of
Bohemian Rhapsody review: On the picture, not the song. I almost didn’t go to see the Queen biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody. The DJ said on the radio at the time. “As for a Bohemian Rhapsody review … well, the reviews are mixed.” After watching it, and being thoroughly moved, especially by the second half of the
I finished Educated by Tara Westover and I enjoyed every minute of it, though the story’s villains — Westover’s parents and her brother Shawn — were unpleasant in the extreme, and slippery to the end. The story, which at the outset appears to treat mainly of the academic success of a child of radical unschooler
I am in mourning because yesterday I finished Hell Bent, a book I was totally taken up with, totally lost in the author’s tale. And now it’s over, I can never visit that world for the first time again. Benjamin Lorr was at one time, if you like, a Bikram Kool-Aid drinker, who went to
Wild by Cheryl Strayed Book Review: A woman’s woman’s book, a woman hiker’s bible, and meditation on what matters, in an exciting package. I have been reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and have found in her a fellow-traveler in more ways than one. Not just someone who felt she had to go somewhere for spiritual
