Happy 80th Birthday, Ursula Le Guin

I find it an almost overwhelming task to write about what Ursula Le Guin means to me. Perhaps you will get an idea of how I’m feeling if I tell you that when I had a chance to meet her, at a reading, and get my copy of Tehanu signed, I got tears in [...]

For Readers and Teachers of Poetry

This is one of those quote-within-a-quote-within-a-quote things that happen in blogs.
Litlove, in a post for the Sunday Salon is writing about reading Rilke’s Duino Elegies.
This post on its own is worth reading, as she captures vividly the ecstacy of reading Rilke.
But I particularly loved this quote from the critic William Gass, writing about [...]

Love, let us be true to one another

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach (or Philip Larkin meets Virginia Woolf)
Note: it’s really impossible to write anything with insight about this book without at least implied spoilers, so if you don’t want even a hint of the outcome, do not read any further.
I can’t decide whether this is a Postmodern novel about the death of [...]

Writer on Poet

This seems like the perfect link for a blog for English. The LiveJournal blogger, “Truepenny,” who is Sarah Monette the author in real life blogs today about Gerard Manley Hopkins. She’s teaching a university course in her area this year, so watch for interesting posts.

Seen Reading

Have you ever craned your neck to see what another person is reading? Seen Reading takes that impulse a step or two further. Here is her modus operandi:
1. I see you reading.
2. I guesstimate where you are in the book.
3. I trip on over to the bookstore and make a note of [...]