“Go Set a Watchman” didn’t have a craft problem. It had a theme problem – in the character of a bigoted Atticus Finch. Read more.
Book Openers
As a little kid I always had my nose in a book. And now that I'm thoroughly grown up, I still do. Below you'll find author profiles (lots of memoirists) as well as mini – and not-so-mini – book reviews.
Two California Poets: One Romantic, the Other Not So Much
Ina Coolbrith palled around San Francisco with Mark Twain, Jack London and Bret Harte. Rebecca Foust hangs out with PTA moms. Both are California poets. Read more.
Jeff Greenwald and Kevin Griffin — A Funny Buddhist and a Happy One
Jeff Greenwald is a master of the upstart art of finding God funny. Kevin Griffin writes about the commonalities between Buddhism and 12-step programs. Read more.
Armistead Maupin: The Man Who Wrote the Quintessential San Francisco Novel — On a Newspaper Deadline
Army’s assignment was to show up at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle every weekday morning and produce seven hundred words, give or take. The challenging part was this: Unlike most newspaper journalists, Army did not sit down to his Selectric typewriter fortified with a fat notebook of stats and quotes. Army’s job was not to report the news. It was to make it up. Read more.
Books I Might Read If I Weren’t So Danged Busy Writing My Own
So many books. So little time. And a manuscript deadline — Dec. 1 — looming so near. Debbie Blue’s new book. Don Lattin’s latest. John Shelby Spong’s thoughts on the Gospel of John . . . and so many others. Read more.
The Lost Poems of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft — A Native Michigan Voice Rediscovered
In the process of moving their collection, the librarians at the Illinois State Historical Library came across some boxes of old documents. One of them contained a lost cache of writings by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, a little known Ojibwe poet from Michigan. Read more.
. . . And Two Books I Did Read, Sorta — By Lauren Winner and Anne LaMott
Yesterday I wrote about five intriguing books that have come across my desk in recent months, good books that I never got around to reading. Here are two more books — by memoirists Anne LaMott and Lauren Winner — that I’ve actually managed to blast through in a couple sittings each. Read more.