4 min read Double negative 2 Book recs, 1 short story Roe v. Wade A Double Negative by Lydia Davis At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.*...
Bookshelf
“The Q-tips Are for Your M4” and the Art of the Paragraph
3 Min read Writer's toolbox Improve writing immediately Book rec AVAILABLE ON PODCAST On SPOTIFY The Q-tips are for your M4, Norah's uncle said as she held them up when unpacking her 7.62 ammunition canister. Norah reached in the green ammo can and took out 100 feet...
“Django with One Finger,” a Living Music Icon
4 min read Book rec Music in Prose Songwriting AVAILABLE IN PODCAST I finished Willie Nelson's memoir or musings from the road, as he titled it. The book is a short reflection on a long life, punctuated throughout with song lyrics and crude jokes and notes from family...
On Puppies and Babies: a “Communion with Terror”
4 min read Book rec AVAILABLE ON PODCAST AT THIS LINK I have a Kong chew toy but I prefer to eat my bed. Three dog beds, seven stuffed toys, multiple socks, countless tissues and trash, the corner of my coffee table, a small remote, a pair of Hoka running shoes. I’ve...
Most Underused Punctuation Mark in American Writing*
Short take Writer's Toolbox Em-dash Book recs So says the lexicographer and usage genius Bryan Garner. My desk copy of the 4th edition of Garner's Modern English Usage states on page 750, "The em-dash is perhaps the most underused punctuation mark in American...
Books for Mothers and Daughters
Short Take, 2 min read Mother's Day Book recs, ages 9 to 99 AVAILABLE ON PODCAST CLICK HERE It's a gray day full of drizzle in Connecticut though it's not as cold as it has been. The yellow lilies in the porch planters are in full bloom and they remind me of my...
Exercises in Style: a Writing Tribute
3 min read Book rec Writing Toolbox Wordplay Ages 9 to 99 AVAILABLE IN PODCAST HERE Titles begin with letters as human forms Narrative One day at about midday in the food line, behind the checkout of a more or less busy Costco, I observed a person with a very big...
1000 Push-ups? Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
6 min read Memoir rec Work-outs, push-ups and running AVAILABLE ON PODCAST CLICK HERE On Spotify On iTunes Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s the short take on Living with a SEAL*, 31 Days Training With the Toughest Man on the Planet. Jesse Itzler, the...
Bedside Counselor on Parenting in Anger, in Two Translations
6 min read Book rec Prose for emergencies Writing feature AVAILABLE IN PODCAST, CLICK HERE For solace and for counsel, I have several books I find myself returning to again and again, and to this one, most recently, as my third child prepares to leave home.* For...
Writing on the Road and the Creative Process
5 min read 4 book recs on writing 1 novel Toolbox, Ages 9-99 AVAILABLE IN PODCAST Spotify iTunes Google Podcasts How do you write on the move? A computer and phone work for me. When I'm not in the TreeHouse I miss my books, dictionaries, and style...
Sex Over 70 Years and the Synecdoche
7 min read, explicit content 2 Books 2 Rhetorical devices The Music in Prose - THL feature focused on writing that 'sings' and why AVAILABLE ON PODCAST Spotify ITunes Google Podcasts It's a double entendre, this letter's headline, but it's fitting. I'm...
Adult Child and a Zen Koan
2 Min Read 1 Book Rec 2.5 Zen Koan** Em Dash* AVAILABLE ON PODCAST Anchor.fm/emelle Spotify iTunes My adult child--an oxymoron when you consider that there is no single word for grown offspring in a language with 171,476 words of which 47,156 are obsolete, but please...
Love in a Sad Cafe
5 Min Read 1 Book Rec The Music in Prose AVAILABLE IN PODCAST Anchor.fm/emelle Spotify iTunes The Music in Prose is a regular feature of the TreeHouseLetter. The idea for this came from my work on music and language, considering just what it is about the...
A Valentine Canine and the Circle of Life
3 Min read 2 Book Recs AVAILABLE ON PODCAST Anchor.fm/emelle Spotify iTunes Herz is a good name for a dog adopted on Valentine's Day, especially for a shepherd mix because Herz is the German word for heart. The dark face and fawn body resembles the Belgian...
The Coaching Habit by Stanier: Short Take on How to Avoid Crappy Advice for the Wrong Problem
2 min read AVAILABLE ON PODCAST Spotify iTunes Anchor.fm/emelle If you're like me and have to work with people, at home or in the work place, then you're looking for ways to improve interactions and relationships. I read Michael Bungay Stanier's bestseller, The...
Thay’s Miracle: Short Take on a Long Life (Thich Nhat Hanh)
AVAILABLE ON POCAST Spotify iTunes Anchor.fm I read the book No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life after my father passed away. The author was the Zen Master and spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, who died this month. He was born in my mother's central...
The Sexy Semicolon, Really?
AVAILABLE ON PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm Loved and loathed, sexy and sinister may not be modifiers that come to mind when you think of the semicolon. Cecelia Watson argues otherwise in her deep dive on this misunderstood mark, concluding a decade of research,...
Poetry for Emergencies: Lain S. Thomas at Daybreak
AVAILABLE ON PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and I’m scared. It’s not often and I usually can get back to sleep. I’m lucky that way because people do suffer from insomnia and my waking is not like that. An overactive...
A New Year: Goals Versus Habits
Available on Podcast iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm The New Year means resolutions and goals, or so it has for me for decades. My father would ask my brother and me as children what our resolutions were. This has been a good practice to reflect on the prior year and...
Alaska Mountains Will Spoil You for All the Rest
AVAILABLE ON PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm Alaska mountains will spoil you for all the rest. Two weeks in Southeast Alaska re-shaped a life-long sense of this remote place, which earned its statehood over sixty years ago in 1959. The fjords and mountains...
Spirits of the Fall: Episode (3) Visits From Beyond
AVAILABLE IN PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm This is the third episode in the series, Spirits of the Fall: True Stories of the Season, eerie occurrences, real-life horrors, ghosts and second sight. Visits From Beyond Last Night I...
Birthday and Death Day, Catholics and Customs
PODCAST AVAILABLE iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm September 2 is a special day for me, the birthday of my daughter and the death day of my father. The cemetery is beautiful. I’ve always had a special regard for cemeteries in spite of the ghosts and the...
Are We Killing the Fat Man? The Corona Trolley Dilemma
AVAILABLE ON PODCAST SPOTIFY ITUNES ANCHOR.FM THE TROLLEY PROBLEM The Trolley thought experiment, first put forth by the philosopher Philippa Foot, pits two schools of moral thought against each other: deontological ethics and utilitarianism. In simple words, the...
Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag – A Russian Novel About Your Life
What can we learn from the Gulag? About the military, about the body and soul? AVAILABLE IN PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm Walking up Hawks Hill near my home, I discovered a pebble in my shoe. I had taken a couple of them out of my right sneaker before...
A Book for Everyone, Even Nonreaders and Grinches
PODCAST INTERVIEW Anchor.fm Spotify iTunes PODCAST SUMMARY (please click on links above for full interview) I talked with editor, writer, and friend, Hayley Swinson, about books and how they help us get into the spirit of the holidays. She shared a...
You’ve tidied up the closet. You’ve tidied up the house. Why not tidy up your writing?
AVAILABLE ON PODCAST iTunes Spotify Anchor.fm A friend lamented the lack of grammar taught in schools and I said that English was out of fashion. What passed for writing in grade school amounted to stream-of-consciousness and emotion-riddled drivel, and to what end:...
Little Free Library – One Year Anniversary
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. Joseph Addison One year ago my children and a couple of West Point cadets helped install our little road-side library, digging a two foot hole, steadying the large bird feeder shaped box and its post with...
ON WALKING – Sedaris, Gornick, Cadogan, & Thoreau
I've come across the topic of walking in my reading, especially lately, as well as over the years. Writers walk and maybe the converse, while not logically true, is true on occasion. Walkers write. I need to walk, I must walk, but like my need to run, I am...
A Remedy Much Desired – Suicide & Three Poems by Max Ehrmann
Fun, colorful, classic. The first two clash with the third, because when we think of classic, especially in fashion, we think modest, elegant, subdued. Designer Kate Spade made the trio possible for professional women, the idea that classic could also be fun and...
Deep Work, Digital Detox, and the Year of the DOG
Deep Work If you haven't read Cal Newport's book Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, I recommend it. A friend gave it to me for my birthday and I finished it in a day, putting off any type of work to imagine the lasting impact of getting in the...
On Music & Parental Advice – A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles, the Man Behind the Gentleman
The Man Behind the Gentleman My town library invited bestselling author Amor Towles to speak at its annual fundraiser and luncheon. He made a living in finance for decades before he began writing seriously. Fiction and story were always a part of his life, a...
Little Free Library – Charter # 46480 – For the Love of Reading
The Little Free Library (LFL) is up, in the yard, along the road, by the wooded end of our lot. It is full of books of all kinds, fiction, non-fiction, young adult, children's, and even an Inaugural Poem, mind games, and a field guide. It is open for fall and school...
The Labyrinth, the Mind, the Imagination – Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Quain was in the habit of arguing that readers were an already extinct species. [Babylon Lottery, Ficciones] Then Bioy Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of...
Spring Cats – Feline Poetry & T.S. Eliot
This spring cats are everywhere, in my reading, on my whiteboard, in illustrations. I came across Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot in Haslams, a sprawling old book store in St. Petersburg, Florida. The subject didn't appeal to me and...
Unity or Chaos? C.S. Lewis on Stage in NYC
On Thought & Existence Do you believe that thought is a collection of atoms rolling about at random in a bony skull? or that the arrangement of such atoms for physical and chemical reasons happened at random? Because if you’re waiting for an answer to this...
A Lifetime in Books – Sandy’s List – Daedalus’s Bookseller
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges When I travel I visit local bookstores, often the highlight of a trip. Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores is a collection of tales and colorful illustrations by writer and...
The Daily Stoic – Only They Truly Live
Of all the people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. Only an ingrate...
The College Essay & the Shameless I – “I enjoy urban hang gliding.”
" The laws of physics do not apply to me . . . Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down." If you haven't encountered the college essay in a while, you're in for treat. I first came across this example in Constance Hale's Sin &...
The Nordic Chronicles – The Norwegian, the Doctor, & the Terrier
How can you tell the difference between a Norwegian introvert and a Norwegian extrovert? When she's talking to you a Norwegian introvert looks at her feet. A Norwegian extrovert looks at yours. I read this years ago, though the joke was about the Finnish. The...
On Riddles & Language – A Cabinet of Curiosities by Roy Sorensen
Assassination Proof? As Nero became more powerful there appeared to be no limit on who he me could eliminate -- even his mother. His philosophy teacher, Seneca, warned Nero that there was someone he could not kill. Who was it? (Sorensen) This riddle felt appropriate...
Which President Succeeded His Successor? – Boston by the Books
“Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are" is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread. François Mauriac BOSTON FOR BOOK NERDS Boston by the books meant a visit to four bookstores and two stationary shops this past...
A Toast for All Times – Weddings & Graduations – Marcus Aurelius
The flight to Seattle from JFK was perfect, a clear day across most of the country. I had a window seat behind the wing on the left side of an Airbus 320, or the south side going west, giving me a bird's eye view of the good old U.S. of A. My neighbor slept and most...
Life is short, art eternal – Beethoven – The Man & the Artist as Revealed in His Own Words
Life is short, art eternal. Beethoven in his Own Words Love of Nature How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it. Wood, trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires. On His On...
What is a Good Life? – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Stop philosophizing about what a good man is and be one. The Roman emperor (161 - 180 AD) Marcus Aurelius wrote this in his personal notes. Considered the last of the Five Great Emperors and regarded as the philosopher king by historians, Aurelius left a legacy in his...
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo – a Gift for Mom and for You
There are three approaches we can take towards our possessions: face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die. ( p. 184) The third approach is a grim reality which readers may relate to. I have a basement of storage boxes, electronics,...
Zest for Life: Five Types of Eaters and The Conquest of Happiness – Bertrand Russell
Five Types of Eaters British logician and philosopher Bertrand Russell asks readers to consider five different ways a man may receive his meal. For some it is entirely a bore, no matter how good the food may be. They have had excellent food before, probably at...
Why Read The Martian?
Here’s something to consider: girls reading science fiction, and more interesting, girls liking science fiction. The ladies in my book group met last night to discuss The Martian by Andy Weir. Yes, it’s a book. The movie came AFTER the book. SCIENCE The science...
Something to Read – Christmas Favorites From Washington Irving to David Sedaris
The Four Gift Rule for kids this season has hit social media and these are my picks for the fourth gift, Something to Read. Four Gift Rule For Children Something they want Something they need Something they wear Something they read I’m the Imelda Marcos of Christmas...
“Do you feel lucky?” – The Luck Factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman
Here’s a story I shared with my teen-aged daughter when things weren't going so well in class. Martin and Brenda Martin stopped by the coffee shop one morning before his meeting. On his way in, he noticed a five pound sterling note by the door and he picked it up. He...
A Prize-Worthy Pulitzer – Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr presented slides at his lecture of the compound eye of a common housefly, the million mile journey of the arctic tern, and childhood photos in his mother's garden. He had little success on the baseball field, but he did learn the difference between...
Why Scout Finch Hates School – the Best Novel of the Century and Progressive Education
"Scout” Finch’s first day in school exposes the pretentious and often hollow ambitions behind progressive education in the 1930s and today. The beloved characters from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird provide timeless insight on public education. Scout’s father...
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee – a Reader’s Guide
What modern classic makes #4 on the banned book list? It’s on 8th grade reading lists around the country. The author’s ‘new’ novel was released this summer and stirred up a controversy, maybe because Harper Collins made historic sales of more than 1.1 million copies...
Born to Run, and Fall – Oso and Athena – Big Runners
The cement gutter seemed to rise towards me after my foot caught on a perfectly fine stretch of road across from the Chevy dealer. It happened so slowly, the images were a series of stills. My center of gravity was beyond recovery and my legs were like drying pasta,...
Interracial Love, the World Child, and Pearl Buck
The name Josui Sakai sounds lovely; it rolls nicely on the tongue, JOH SOOEY SAH KAI. Josui left the United States with her parents during WWII to avoid being placed into the Japanese American internment camps, a decision her father made. American born and raised...
The Meaning of Human Existence – Edward O. Wilson – Ant Scientist Has Answers
This book is an interesting source for answers. I guessed the author would be a philosopher or a novelist, maybe a rabbi or priest. But he is none of those. He is a myrmecologist, or scientist specializing in the study of ants. Edward Osborne Wilson won the Pulitzer...
Excellent Sheep: the Miseducation of the American Elite by William Deresiewicz, an Elitist Who Knows
His observations and analysis from inside the Ivy League are compelling, but the professor's solution is as elitist as his career path. William Deresiewicz argues that today's elite educational institutions produce excellent hoop-jumpers, teacher pleasers, and masters...
A Year of Reading
If you could see a summary of the food you digested in 2014, you might find some surprises: 17 pounds of chocolate, 47 of bottles of wine, 5.7 servings of red meat a week, 1.3 fast food visits per week, the venial sin in this quarter is fried chicken or Five...
Where Are the Tough Teachers? Mediocre Music & Why We Need Mr. K
I drove to my son's winter concert listening to Yo-Yo Ma's holiday album with musicians Chris Botti on trumpet and Natalie MacMaster on fiddle. I wanted to get into the holiday spirit, but perhaps I set myself up for disappointment. The school's preparatory ensemble...
Train Dreams – Denis Johnson – Here’s Why I Steal Books
I steal books. It doesn't happen often and if possible, I make a confession, appealing to the owner's sympathies and good will. I replace the books when I can, though one librarian was not happy about it. The surroundings have as much to do with it as the writing and...
Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Should Books Get a Rating Like Movies?
Parents get upset about the book Beloved and here's why. In the first chapter, Toni Morrison wrote about the five men who were "so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves." Go ahead. Read it again; I had too. My reading group picked this as part of...
The GoldFinch – Donna Tartt – Spew-litzer Prize Study in Victimology
I kept reading The Goldfinch for several reasons: it was my reading group's selection, I had to facilitate the discussion, and it won the Pulitzer for Fiction. This became the kind of book that I needed to set aside time to read, because it required effort. I'm OK...
“The more you buy, the less you have” – Parent’s Tao Te Ching – Verse 47
This is poem 47 from the Tao and the Parent's Tao. I wrote about William Martin's book because his simple words are more compelling than those of any 'parenting manual' I've read. (Link to Parent's Tao Changed my Attitude on 'Parenting') Martin writes the 81 poems...
What would Don Quixote do? Quixote on Families and Greatness
Don Quixote himself will answer this question, and I promise to relate such counsel as faithfully as this modern, wretched hand will permit. You may ask, "Who cares what Quixote thinks or does?" The sane madman and the wise fool (Sancho Panza) are two of the most...
Quiet: the Power of Introverts – Susan Cain – in the Top 10
This makes my top 10 list. Here’s why. With her book, Susan Cain gave me a gift as lasting and substantial as any literary work I’ve read. Every now and then you read something that reaches you, touches you deeply in ways you could not imagine. Quiet does that...
Ten Books That Stayed With Me, a Facebook Meme
"Ten books that stayed with me" is a post circulating on Facebook. I write about books on this site, so when a friend asked for my list, I thought I would share them here too. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling (favorites in series...
Invisible Cities – Italo Cavino – Constructs of the Mind
Italo Calvino was the most translated Italian author of his time and a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Published in 1972, Invisible Cities (link to book) is considered Calvino's masterpiece. It's a slender 165 page volume, but beware. The words and the...
In the Heart of the Sea – Philbrick – Couples Book Night
As part of an "inaugural town-wide reading initiative," our library chose In the Heart of the Sea, the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex for its first selection. Nathaniel Philbrick earned the National Book Award for this retelling of the fateful 1819 voyage from...
My Antonia – Willa Cather – an American Beauty
In My Ántonia, Willa Cather writes about our American past, its western expansion, rugged living, and the indomitable spirit of the men and women of the late 1800s. The character of Antonia embodies all this, but the book is so much more. It's a portrait of our...
The Sybil – Par Lagerkvist – Summary & Review
The Oracle of Delphi and the Divine in All of Us The Swedish author Par Lagerkvist won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1951 and this story is worth your time; it’s just 154 pages and readable in a day. Some readers get upset because he combines Greek paganism and...
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev – Russian Ideology Then and Now
I like the insights literature provides about a country's ideologies and sense of self. Turgenev published Fathers and Sons in1861 to the criticism of all, both the new order and the established. It became regarded as the first modern Russian novel and his most...