The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, 1925, 180 pp.) Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is one of those artists whose tragic life has become in some ways more famous than his creations. He was a founding member of the Lost Generation of (mostly) expatriate writers who flourished in the 1920s and ’30s, and who …Continue Reading »
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott (Pantheon, 1994, 237 pp.) Writing, someone once said, is easy. Just sit down and wait for the blood to pour out of your forehead. Mark Twain said that to write, all you had to do was cross out the wrong words. This is …Continue Reading »
Time Enough at Last Every so often, I’ll take a break from discussing the book I’m currently reading and give long-suffering followers a welcome respite. In these intervals, we’ll talk about the reading life more broadly, perusing weighty issues about reading, to wit: how do we find more time to read? This is a question …Continue Reading »
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, by Steve Brusatte (William Morrow, 2018, 404 pp.) I’ve never read a book about dinosaurs. Growing up, I was never very good at (or interested in) science, though like everyone else I went to see Jurassic Park on the big screen …Continue Reading »
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, by Luc Ferry (Harper Perennial, 2011, 282 pp.) Last week the subject was the creation of our individual identity—what makes us who we are? This week’s subject is coming to terms with our place in the universe: how we should go about living our lives …Continue Reading »