Don’t you think Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel ever? It’s by far my favorite. That’s kind of a joke because most characters in...

I’ve never been big on making New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, the idea used to annoy me deeply back when I worked out at a gym and...

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about Indigenous Americans’ Original Instructions. “These are not ‘instructions’ like...

I’m entranced by Eudora Welty right now. Reading her short story "Livvie," I’m awed by how much Welty does in just ten pages. In One...

Having read Angela’s Ashes and The Liar’s Club in quick succession, I was beginning to think that the only enjoyable memoirs overflow...

I used to pay a lot of attention to the first lines in books. I had a notebook where I wrote them down and classified them according to...

Ooph.I was relishing Mary Karr’s delicious language, but didn’t realize that this line I so admired - “Maybe it's wrong to blame the...

Penelope Fitzgerald always wanted her children to be well-educated, to study foreign languages, to be employable. In her biography of...

And the most disappointing thing about the book is the way Liz Gilbert seems to suggest that in finding Felipe she’s completed her...

Soul Vows is my favorite of Janet Conner’s books. I have gone through it twice and have twice crafted my own set of vows. I think that’s...

Brené Brown’s natal chart (available at Astro Databank) provides a deeper understanding of the 12th house - that hidden house where...

My nest is empty and I’m grasping like a drowning person at anything that will tether me to a sense of stability and meaningful purpose....

Artbitrary Stupid Goal is excellent. I bought it having seen that it's one of Austin Kleon's book club picks and I devoured it, both...

As I read through Crones Don’t Whine by Jean Shinoda Bolen, I found myself dismissing it as fluff. It seemed to be just a collection of...

I loved Dominique Christina’s This is Woman’s Work. It’s not a scholarly work on archetypes, it’s her lived experience of these...

I’ve been trying to read Carol Lee Flinders’ book Enduring Grace and am having to confront my repugnance for asceticism. The first female...

Mark Nepo writes in The One Life We’re Given of finding grace and wonder in the act of spoon feeding his invalid father. It’s a...

In If Women Rose Rooted, Sharon Blackie recounts the myth of Mis, who goes wild with grief at her father’s death, becoming crazed and...

I think of MFK Fisher as a food writer, but last night as I cozied up to Last House and a piece of pie (MFK Fisher would probably not...

Looking at Katharine Hepburn’s busy 7th house, we realize that she was not going to be allowed to skip the class on human relationships...