In the face of depressing news I always ask myself: What can we set against it? And I always end up with the same answer: The pursuit of beauty and [...]
I just clicked the Send button to submit my last book review. Until now I told myself that this would be my last. I don't want to have to read [...]
The actual House of Windows as far as we could tell Have you ever traveled in the footsteps of a book? Visited the location where a character lived? [...]
On our recent trip to Boston, we visited Plimouth Plantation. As often happens when traveling, you go out to see one thing and discover another. Plimouth Plantation hadn't been the [...]
I just reread a book I had read in 2012 when it first came out: Susannah Conway's This I Know. It is one of the few books I've gifted several [...]
{August Break 8/6: I'm Reading...} I can never just read one book! My current bedtime reading is Yossi Klein Halevi's Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist. I loved his book Like [...]
The other day I cast about for a comfort book, something pleasant to read in the tub after a busy day. Usually that would mean an Agatha Christie mystery for [...]
While walking to my Ulpan (Hebrew school) in Jerusalem this morning, I passed by this street library set up in an old bus station. Of course I was immediately charmed [...]
I didn't read the book for the December meeting of the Memoir Workshop I teach at StoryStudio Chicago. If the instructor doesn't read the assigned book, that's pretty bad, right? [...]
Our Chicago - Eleven Writers on their City - Edited by Annette Gendler | Make Your Own Book I published a book with my students! Our Chicago is a collection of [...]
I just finished a book I really liked, one I had been meaning to read for a while, and I'm sad it's done. That's the hallmark of a good book, [...]
On a recent Sunday, the mood struck me to finally weed out the three shelves in our big wall of books that are dedicated to my collection of memoirs. The shelves [...]
The bookshelves of other people are fascinating. What do they tell you? When I'm invited to other people's homes, I appreciate when one of the rooms I get to be in [...]
The Make Way for Ducklings sculpture in the Public Garden in Boston, created by Nancy Schön Oh, the power of fiction! Especially children's fiction! It had my kids and me retracing [...]
Ellen Sheffield's Book Arts Studio at Kenyon College One of my housemates at the Kenyon Writer's Workshop was Mimi Chiang, and not only did we hit it off right away, [...]
When I saw the news on my Chicago Tribune homepage last night that Joyce Brothers had died, my heart sank. I never met her, never had an exchange with her, [...]
The often incorrect use of the term memoir is a pet peeve of mine; after all, it is my genre. It's what I write primarily, and what I teach. So [...]
Some of my grandfather's books, now on my bookshelf When my grandparents were expelled from their hometown in Czechoslovakia after World War II, they lost their house [...]
I've been cleaning up my desk (a highly overdue task) and came across this Borders bookmark. I was about to toss it in the recycling bin, when I stopped [...]
Today is the last day of November, an appropriate time to share with you my favorite poem, Herbsttag (Autumn Day) by Rainer Maria Rilke. Many of you probably know [...]