When I was in high school, Cliffs Notes were available (for those who could afford them) to get summaries of the key elements of a variety of popular books. I know how students used Cliffs Notes, but I have always been uncertain as to the intention behind their creation. Giving them the benefit of the…
I’m not a big gamer, but there are certain types of games that I like. I enjoy games like the Ultima series. A few years ago, shortly after we got an Xbox, I played Skyrim, and thought it was pretty fantastic. Generally thought, time spent playing video games is not time reading or writing, so…
A while back, I wrote a post on letters vs. email in which I considered the pleasures of the former and frustrations of the latter in our current high-paced, highly digital environment. Recently, a friend of mine wrote an excellent post on his blog that was in something of a similar vain: “Navigating the Digital…
Last week was a very busy one in L.A. and it threw me off my game. I had almost no time to read, and by the time I could read, I was too worn out. I hate when this happens because it takes a while to get my momentum back and find something that really…
I keep a wishlist of books that I want to read. It never gets too long. There are 28 entries in the list as of this writing, and having just reviewed them, I can probably eliminate half since the fond feelings I once had for them have passed. There are three levels to my reading…
Now that 2018 is behind us, my conscience is clear and I feel like I can list my favorite reads of 2018. These are the best books I read during 2018, not necessarily books that were published in 2018. I kept my method of selection simple: I reviewed all the books I read in a…
Around 10 pm last night, Christmas Eve, our dark bedroom grew noticeably brighter. From behind the trees in the east, a full moon gazed down from its perch in the bleachers, a quarter million miles away. My eyes had already adjusted to the dark, and the moon seemed impossibly bright. I stared at it for…
It just so happens that I am on vacation through the end of the year. Since what book I am reading often reminds me of what I was doing when I was reading it, I try to keep things a bit lighter when on vacation, although it doesn’t always work out that way. As we…
When I read book, I see what’s happening in my imagination. Over the years, I seem to have developed a stock of stages that serve as the default placeholder for many common settings that I come across. I call these stages the backlots of the mind. I was recently re-reading Stephen King’s novella “1922” which…
I didn’t have a specific reading goal for 2018. That is, I didn’t say to myself, I am going to read 50 books this year. Way back when I started keeping my list of books in 1996, I did have a goal: Read one book per week. It seemed reasonable at the time, and yet…
Sitting on the sideline at my son’s basketball practice I was reminded of a mild malady from which I suffer: biblio curiositas. A medical dictionary might describe such an illness as a sudden, urgent desire to know what it is that person sitting next to me is reading. I’m paraphrasing, of course. Still, I find…
The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your conclusions. If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not…