Monthly Archive:: November 2013

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone! Here are some links to ponder while traveling in airports or digesting pumpkin pie.   Literary One of my favorite links ever. In 1963, 16-year-old Bruce McAllister wrote to 150 novelists asking if they intentionally planted symbolism in their work.

  This book received a lot of press when it came out in 2011. Jeffrey Eugenides had received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as a bunch of other awards, in 2003 for his second novel, Middlesex (which is fantastic).

I attended a reading by Augusten Burroughs a few weeks ago as part of Hunter College’s Distinguished Writers Series. Burroughs is best known for his 2002 memoir Running with Scissors, which I read a few years back (there’s a movie too).

  Ahh this book. This book. It’s not a happy novel, or one with a promising ending, or one that’s particularly optimistic. However, I continually find myself coming back to this novel (or suggesting it to others) when I want to read something that is well-written, inclusive, and filled with love. 

Dorris Lessing, British writer and the winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away on Sunday at the age of 94. In her honor: “What’s terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate.

Literary Sylvia Plath’s unseen drawings from her private letters were displayed on Brain Pickings this week. I could spend days on that blog. Beautiful, wise words aren’t only found it books. November 19 marks the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

Ireland trip continued! Intro is here. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. After a whirlwind three days of traveling around the south of Ireland, we settled in for a cozy 3 nights in Galway at the Almara House.

In honor of Veteran’s Day: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Happy Friday folks!   Literary (words and stuff) Albert Camus wrote this beautiful, touching letter to his former teacher after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. I think we can all learn from this man’s humble and gentle manner. “I embrace you with all my heart…”

  I think Swamplandia! is one of those books that critics loved (it was the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of the Year) but readers are not as convinced.