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The Book Binder's Daughter - Books & Literature
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For What Binds Us: My Year in Review | The Book Binder's Daughter
Books read in 2023. Not pictured are Buddenbrooks and Bleak House. It's been a wild and crazy year for me, personally, professionally, emotionally, physically, etc. Most of my focus has been on building an ICF house with my business partner and getting my daughter through the process of applying to college. I had a milestone birthday, went…
Moderating and Checking The Emotions: Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham |
One of my closest friends is always telling me not to take off hand remarks or things that people say personally. It's a good piece of advice but one that is much easier said that done. I think he is gently trying to teach me what Spinoza says in his Ethics about emotions being a…
On Reading Big Books Again: The Doll by Bolesław Prus |
I've been reading enormous books again---the doorstopper variety that Henry James famously labelled as "loose, baggy monsters." It's not that I had developed an aversion to large books or to reading in general but I seem to have lost interest in longer tomes in the past 3 years. I remember reading Neil Peart's book Ghost…
All Day I Loved You in a Fever: The Poetry of Robert Bly |
I was first intrigued by Robert Bly's poetry when I came across a description of his life and work in Michael Schmidt's Lives of the Poets. While browsing a used bookshop in New England a few weekends ago, I bought a slim, hardcover volume of his poetry entitled, "Loving a Woman in Two Worlds." My…
Winter Vocative: The Poetry of William Bronk |
My mother and business partner/friend Ken do not like winter at all---the dark, the cold, the short days. I found two poems by William Bronk about the positives of winter in the hopes that it might change their minds....a little. The First is "Winter Light" which reminds us that we can't appreciate the light without…
This Obscure Warmth of the Soul: Memory, Grief and Love |
Grief feels like a race against time while I wait for my memories to fade---the memories of a happy life, the memories of a shattered life, the memories of the pain. Distract yourself with new activities, meet new people, make new connections is the advice I am constantly given. And strangely enough sometimes being with…
Respice Futurum: The Future Doesn’t Help |
Every year I compose a reflective piece entitled "Respice Futurum" describing the books I plan to read in the new year. As I’ve explained in previous posts, the institution where I have had the privilege of teaching Latin and Classics for many years now is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States…
Why Must I be Preyed Upon? |
Pain, and grief and heartsickness can be so lonely and isolating. The rollercoaster of emotions settle down, but there are still days when the pain, the memories of what has been lost feels like a harsh punch in the chest. Who can I talk to? Who can I call? To whom can I describe this…
Packing My Library |
I spent the day sorting, cleaning and packing up many of the books in my library. My book room had become so crowded with books one could barely walk into it because of the volumes stacked on the floor. Since leaving my teaching career and life as a classicist behind, I've also had to face…
Putting My Shaken House in its New Order: What 2020 Has Taught Me |
I normally compose a year-end post discussing the books I've read and how my reading, writing and thinking about literature progresses and shifts over the course of time. I contemplate my ever- evolving literary choices in light of what George Steiner writes in his essay Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: “Great works of art pass through us like…
Odi et Amo: Darconville’s Cat by Alexander Theroux |
The first century B.C. Roman poet Catullus expresses his frustration and torment with his lover---an older married woman---in what is his shortest and, arguably, his most famous poem: Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. I hate you and I love you. You may be wondering how can I…
Comfort, Luxury and Domestic Happiness: Modern Villas |
On March 13th, 2020 I walked out of my classroom at The Woodstock Academy wondering when I would be back. How many books should I take with me? When would I see my students in person again? Everything was being shut down so rapidly because of COVID and no one knew how long it would…
The Endless Renewal of Desire |
Fall used to be my favorite time of the year; a new year of teaching and meeting students, my birthday, our anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas and my late husband's birthday all in succession. Now Fall has become my saddest, heaviest part of the year for the same reasons---none of these celebrations seem right without him. I…
Finis |
JMW Turner. Dido Building Carthage. Oil on Canvas. 1815. On March 13th, 2020 I walked out of my classroom at The Woodstock Academy wondering when I would be back. How many books should I take with me? When would I see my students in person again? Everything was being shut down so rapidly because of…
Grief as a Test: The Collected Poems of Louise Glück |
Grief, I have learned, any type of grief, is a test---albeit a cruel, harsh, and unfair one---of the people around us, those whom we lean on and consider our support system. Grief strips away any pretensions, facades, masks, and posturing and challenges all types of relationships in a way that no other human emotion can.…