Margaret Verble’s Stealing will stand in my bookshelf among the books it reminds me of: To Kill a Mockingbird, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Harriet the Spy. Stealing needs to be a classic equal to the most important of these other books — whichever one you deem that to be. It’s a story of a motherless daughter who shows the self sufficiency of a skilled and extraordinary child, contributing to her family and loved by them, until a cascade of awful events beyond her ability to manage. It reminds me of the above-mentioned books in its voice and its…
With the death of Sinéad O’Connor, I don’t want to do anything today. It feels like the death of a distant friend. I didn’t follow her closely, even though I loved her singing voice and the songs I heard on the radio. Am I allowed to feel this knocked off my feet? I loved her especially for her image and her actions. She came into my consciousness with the videos of her first hits. I was twenty-four. Her shaved head and boyish clothes zinged into my mind like a secret message of validation to my inner twelve-year-old. She seemed to…
I’ve been trying to support other writers’ work in my small sphere, so why not shout out my favorite podcasts too? Here are six.
As a child, I couldn’t see past the end of my nose, so my decisions didn’t always serve me as well as possible in the long run.
He’s public, he’s private, he’s a resource, a treasure, a person.
Headlines state that she was “booed offstage,” but that’s untrue. She remained standing, stopped her band from playing, and performed Bob Marley’s “War” acapella.
We have to accept that we are creatures with limited time, and that sometimes we are subject to disappointment and there’s no way around it. Which means we have to be patient. On the positive side, we get to set the priorities that make us feel like our real self, and being patient feels good. The implications Burkeman lays out grow bigger with each chapter.