In The Fixer, Bernard Malamud tells the story of Yakov Bok, a poor Jew living in Ukraine during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II. The novel opens with Yakov at a point of frustration in his life: he works as a "fixer," a sort of all-around handyman, but he can't make enough money and is always broke; he wants to be a father but his wife, who has been ( Read more... )

I've always sided with the Trojans in the Trojan War. That's an absurd thing to say, of course, but it's true. Maybe I have a thing for underdogs. Or, more likely, it's because I read Virgil before I read Homer. By the time I got to The Iliad, the Greeks were already the enemy. So I was surprised, when I read David Malouf's novel Ransom, to ( Read more... )

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Adrienne Rich, poet who changed me when I heard her work at sixteen years old, poet whose words I turned to when I first fell in love, poet of grief, poet of anger, poet of ardor--Adrienne Rich died today ( Read more... )

I have been reading Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a collection of three short novels written by Katherine Anne Porter in the 1930s. I picked up the book on a whim in a used bookstore while Ms. E and I were in Vermont last summer--Porter's name was familiar to me, and I've been interested in fiction of intermediate lengths ever since taking a novella ( Read more... )

Cool and damp today, the weather feels like true spring after the run of early summer days with which we began the week. I have had a type of quiet morning that I really enjoy: puttering around the house by myself, straightening and setting things right as I go, doing some light chores, folding a basket of laundry, refilling the bird feeder... ( Read more... )

When I made my annual reading list at the end of 2010, I was terribly disappointed to realize that I had only read 22 books that year. So in 2011, for the first time ever, I set a numerical goal for my reading: 30 books. I made it, though not by much; I read a grand total of 32 books in 2011. It was interesting to read with a goal in mind. I ( Read more... )

Originally published in Czechoslovakia in 1976, Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal tells the story of Hanta, a man who has spent thirty-five years compacting wastepaper with a hydraulic press. He spends his days in a cellar full of every kind of paper product: blood-soaked butcher's paper, newspapers, encyclopedias, rare editions of the ( Read more... )

I. BirdsMy interest in birds began with water birds. I think this is true for many people; after all, if you start your bird-watching career by trying to sort out all the different species of sparrow, you will spend your time staring at tiny brown birds that flit through the underbrush without ever seeming to sit still, and you will most likely ( Read more... )