Book columnist Ryan Lillestrand PZ ’23 praises Bill Buford’s “Dirt” for its vivid imagery and reflects on the merits of the modern personal narrative.
Tag: Book Column
Assorted novelties: My year of Zadie Smith thinking
After a year reading Zadie Smith, book columnist Anna Solomon PZ ’23 concludes that Smith’s writing, in forcing readers to take up another’s perspective, is mandatory quarantine reading.
Assorted novelties: Iconoclasm, admiration and Patti Smith
Book columnist Anna Solomon PZ ’23 reflects on reading Patti Smith’s “Just Kids” and when admiration becomes a desire to emulate.
Assorted novelties: Between the Zoom bookshelves
Book columnist Anna Solomon PZ ’23 discusses how Zoom bookshelf backgrounds have become status symbols in the coronavirus pandemic.
Assorted novelties: A literary reflection on Beston’s ‘The Outermost House’
Book columnist Anna Solomon ’23 reflects on Henry Beston’s “The Outermost House” and how it gave her a better sense of place in quarantine.
In my book: The lovely fantasyland of bookstagram
Is it really so awful for a group of mostly female book-lovers to appreciate not just content, but also form?
In My Book: Knowing when to move on
There is a sad truth that all readers must, at some point, acknowledge: It’s impossible to read everything.
How novelty brings insane to the sane
Warning: This column contains spoilers. “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn begins: “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. And what’s inside it. I think of that too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling
Oh God, not another bookmark: The six most awful gifts a reader can get
Reading is not often thought of as a particularly risky passion. Sure, you can argue that it expands your mind to dangerously new heights or that books are addictive. But overall, it’s a safer choice than, let’s say, skydiving, or training poisonous snakes, or recreating “Die Hard” car chase scenes.
Metaphors: Salvaging Our Relationships
I’m sitting at a mahogany table; it’s big and round and shrinks the classroom to half its real size. My classmates fill the spaces at the table’s circumference, listening, talking, pondering, ruminating. I have ideas brewing in my mind. But when I come to verbalize them, I fall short of