Category: Books
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Reading plans for spring
As springtime approaches, I look up from my dense winter books and set out in search of something lighter, something airy. Birdsong is gradually increasing in volume and melody in the mornings. Night starts later and later as the sun steals a bit more time away from the moon. Each day I feel closer to…
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5 books about focusing
Our ability to focus — or the lack thereof — is a major topic of conversation nowadays. From social media platforms with algorithms specifically designed to keep us scrolling to buzzing phones that hardly leave our sight, there’s so much about our surroundings that makes it hard to truly focus for more than a few…
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Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
“And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.” Claire Keegan’s short novel Small Things Like These is so easy to become enamored…
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The White Album by Joan Didion
“Of course great hotels have always been social ideas, flawless mirrors to the particular societies they service.” (“In the Islands”) Published in 1979, The White Album is a collection of Didion’s essays that were previously included in magazines. These essays span a myriad of topics, from Didion’s thoughts on California, Hollywood, and Hawaii to the…
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Reading goals for 2023 (informed by Atomic Habits)
January has arrived with its usual buzz around New Year’s resolutions. So many of us are reflecting on 2022 and thinking of how we want to feel and what we want to achieve in 2023. I love this process of reflection and goal setting, but I’m always cautious about not setting the bar too high…
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December reading plans
It’s “stick season” as they say where I live, which means that all the leaves have fallen and the forests are like webs of bare branches. Mornings are frosty, days are short, and I’ve gone searching in my drawers for my favorite knit hat again. Downtown they’ve hung wreaths and lights from the lampposts and…
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November reading plans
My October was filled with cozy, spooky reads, from Frankenstein and The Scarlet Letter to Practical Magic and everything in between. I embraced reading seasonally and loved how much more connected it made me feel to autumn. I hope to read similarly in November. November has always felt like a sort of resting period to…
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The best books I read in 2020
I thought making this list would be easy. Yet this year has gone by so quickly in hindsight (and so, so slowly in the moment) that somehow I forgot just how many fantastic books I read this year. In the midst of everything that became 2020, I managed to read 70 books, several of which…
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Dear Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: a take on the Gothic novel
Dear Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: After a bit of an Austen drought for me, I decided to listen to the audiobook version of you. I have been slowly working my way through Austen’s novels for years (besides you, I have read Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma), so I was excited to finally read…
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Dear The Reivers by William Faulkner: a much-needed exhale
Dear The Reivers by William Faulkner: After finishing what ended up being my most stressful semester of school yet (third semester of law school, it was a lot), I immediately knew what book I needed to pick up: you, the unread Faulkner book that had been waiting for me on my shelf for months. I’ve…
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