My favorite place to read as a child was under the covers with a flashlight. While the pleasure of being subversive and sticking it to The Man (who, in this case, happened to be a woman: my mom) no doubt played a role, more compelling was that I appreciated the sensory deprivation that facilitated disappearing …
Since Stephen Mitchell’s 2011 translation of the The Iliad came out, I’ve been telling myself that I should reread this epic poem. The last time I read it, I was in high school studying modern Greek with a tutor. This tutor came to my house each week. Seated at a round table in my parents’s shades-of-brown …
Seven (7). That is how many copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone live in my house. I mention this because if you’ve read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, you may recall that seven is a powerfully magical number. Do with this information what you will. Now then, how does one end up with seven copies of …
Continue reading “On Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and the Magical Number Seven”
We are now firmly in the grip of my favorite time of year – the months of October through December. I love autumn leaves. I love pumpkins and gingerbread (in all their decorative, imbibe-able, and edible forms). And I love seasonal reading. With my son well out of the picture books stage, lingering at the Halloween …
I had a terrible moment while reading Charles Dickens recently. I was just beginning the second paragraph of the second chapter of “Oliver Twist,” where the narrator describes Oliver’s first months of life as a ward of the state: The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to …
Sometimes, I think that not reading would actually take more effort for me than reading. Words are my Pied Piper. I see them – on billboards, boxes, or between the covers of a book – and I must follow them to see where they’ll take me. I am that person who reads signage out loud without …
Continue reading “Literary Excursions: The Wallace Stevens Walk in Hartford, Conn.”
