I miss you guys! Popping in to share a few things that I’m reading and loving lately, and would love to hear from you.
Above: my favorite flowers, on our kitchen table.
The Farm
Attention is the Beginning of Devotion – I adore this Atlantic piece about Mary Oliver’s poetry, which exhorts the reader, almost above all else, to pay attention and to notice. These are themes that recur in my life, and it won’t surprise anyone that Oliver is my favorite poet.
The Difference Between Happiness and Joy – This David Brooks oped in the New York Times moved me. Just, yes. Magic. A blaze of joy. In this liminal season of commencements, awareness of our good fortune and of the farewells that fill our lives are heightened, and I experience the vulnerability that Brooks cites.
Forties Stories – I’ve been listening to more podcasts lately, when I run in the mornings (which I do only when it’s light out, don’t worry) and when I drive. I found Christy Maguire’s wonderful podcast through my friend Nina Badzin and am so grateful for what she’s doing.
What are you reading, listening to, thinking about, and loving lately?
I’ve missed you too! I’ve been listening to a folk group called The Arcadian Wild – saw them live recently. Love that Mary Oliver piece.
The recent piece on David Brooks in New York Magazine by Lisa Miller is everything: “68 Minutes With David Brooks The conservative columnist takes a look inside his soul. But what does he see?“
Sample:
“And while The Second Mountain purports to describe the hyperindividualism of American politics and society as a disease and wonkily offers cures that fans of Oprah absorbed long ago, it would not be hyperbole to say that it is also, both explicitly and between the lines, a gushing paean to romance from a gobsmacked man happily rediscovering sex. As such, it is full of cringeworthy aphorisms. “Love,” writes Brooks, “plows open the hard crust of our personality and exposes the fertile soil below.”
“I ask Brooks whether he can see the irony: the pundit preaching on holiness, the public intellectual holding forth on humility, the middle-aged divorcé lecturing on love, the defender of the Republican aristocracy writing a book about the sacred poor. But self-knowledge has never been Brooks’s particular strength — or rather, in its mix of self-mocking, striving, and naïveté, his view of himself can fail to come into focus. “I don’t see myself as a privileged person,” he says, hesitating. “I make more than people — well, maybe I should take that back. Yeah, I do take that back.”
Lisa Miller is national treasure.
The Farm is next on my list. I’m finishing up a The Romantics which is fantastic! Highly recommend.
So glad to see that you’ve returned to your blog. I love reading your pieces and the love and emotion that you share
Thanks for the mention! Great to see you here again!
What a lovely, lovely surprise to see you pop in here! I gave just finished Educated, having seen it first mentioned by you here. Just wow.
I’ve alse loved A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler. I hope the translation is as good as the original. I’ve inhaled it during a recent flight and it left me full, satisfied, and sad, all in a good way. Much love to you!
Was so happy to see your name in my bloglovin’ feed! And then to see my name in here put another smile on my face. Putting The Farm on my list!
Good to see you back! I just finished Educated and Good Talk and am reading The Parisian and The Library Book and Virgil Wander. In one of those confluences, all the library books I put holds on months to weeks ago became available at once, so I’m also listening to Becoming read by Michelle Obama herself (love it). I’m trying to read all of these before I have to give them back!!!