spoonreader

It's been a great run here at spoonreader, but all good things must come to an end. Or at any rate, what with graduating from library sc...

I have finally graduated from library school! Yes, the long hiatus from this blog was as I finally finished my program. I have some plans fo...

I read two excellent books recently, a collection of short stories and a novel. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. This is very close to...

The spouse and I talk a lot about newspapers, the economy, old and new business models, and the tide of history. In that vein, he recently s...

My story of the week is about American death rituals, or lack thereof. Thomas G. Long, a professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emor...

In honor of Halloween, here is a poem from William Butler Yeats, my favorite poet: The Cat and the Moon THE CAT went here and there And the ...

I read two really good books lately that have nothing in common. First, Toni Morrison's A Mercy . She's Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize w...

I'm instituting a new feature here at spoonreader: Reader advisory for news stories and features. I hope to highlight something interest...

I consider the 2008 election something of a subject specialty, so I've been trying to be strategic about reading new books about the ele...

Yesterday was J. Alfred Prufrock Day, which is the way I think of the birthday of T.S. Eliot. I love that poem so much. Whenever I feel crea...

My friend K., a teacher, posted a note about her students and their difficulties reading Jane Austen. She quipped that Austen appears to be ...

I recently finished The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power , by David E. Sanger. It was an excellen...

In fairness, I wouldn't call letting kids pick their own books "crazy." Debatable, but not crazy. But this essay I ran acros...

English teachers are starting to let their students pick their own books, according to a Sunday front page story in The New York Times. The ...

John Wilson reflects on author Michael Chabon's recent essay about suicide and the death of David Foster Wallace. I can't find Chab...

I'm always on the look-out for high-quality fiction written about the way we live now. Writing about right now , I imagine, is pretty to...

I realized recently that I haven't been very good about writing in a tiny brown leather notebook where I keep a list of all the books I...

I got a new book in the mail today. It's " Zeitoun ," by Dave Eggers, and it's about a Syrian-American family that survive...

I've been trying to slow down and not get over-busy, so that slows my reading down a little. Mainly, right now I'm reading The Broth...

I was in New Orleans last weekend for a wedding and went to the wonderful book store Faulkner House . K. and J. introduced me to this place ...

The most excellent class of Adult Services, a.k.a. Reader Advisory, has come to an end. I loved everything about this class, which taught th...

One of my favorite blogs is Zen Habits . It's about living a simple life, being organized, and getting things done. So it's right up...

I dreamed of David Foster Wallace a few nights ago. He looked just like his photos, the ones where he has long hair and no bandana. He was s...

Here's a selection from the conclusion of the 1847 novel Jane Eyre , by Charlotte Bronte: I have now been married ten years. I know wha...

My library school class is coming to a fast close. I'm a little sad, because this has been one my favorite classes of library school. It...

The spouse went to Ireland, and because I had to stay home, he brought me back a truly splendid gift: W. B. Yeats: The Poems , a hardcover c...

I love books as objects -- I do, I do, I do! And I much prefer hardcovers to paperbacks. I'm in my 30s, and I've seen beloved paperb...

Here is my book talk on The Book of Chameleons for my library science class after finding it on the Three Percent blog, an excellent sourc...

D.T. Max of The New Yorker has a heart-breaking story about David Foster Wallace -- his career as an author and his last days. Wallace was ...

I can't resist logging this amusing Jane Austen comparison from Sunday's Maureen Dowd column in The New York Time s. The heart of t...

I was talking with a friend lately outlining my reading list for the next few months. Anyway, here's what I have read in what order. The...

You've heard of never speaking ill of the dead? Well, I choose never to speak ill of poets. I love poetry, and it's in too much trou...

Some of you have already seen this, but for everyone else, this is my book talk on " Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ." Keep i...

Just to note it, here's a link to a review I wrote about a biography of Michelle Obama . Bottom line: For researchers and investigators,...

I've finished all the core courses for library science school and now I'm into eclectic electives. The one I'm in now is awesome...

Last week in The New Yorker was a very charming, very sad personal history, Making Toast (subscription required; Dec. 15th issue). It'...

Sorry for all the death and morbidity on this blog lately! I guess that's the literary world for you. A friend told me recently that se...

My online Yale course on modern poetry continues. Over the weekend, I listened to the two lectures on Robert Frost and learned about a poem ...

I was tempted to read the Twilight novel series, but I resisted with all my might. There were many things that may have tempted me: It's...

Over the holiday, I picked up a copy of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds , one of the great Irish novels of the 20th century. I can...

I'm a little late blogging this, but here's my review of Home, by Marilynne Robinson .  In Gilead, a sleepy little town in Iowa in 1...

I saw an op-ed piece in The Washington Pos t recently that said to the effect "Let Barack Obama smoke if he wants to." (Actual hea...

Add bemused to the list of words -- like nonplussed -- that seem to be morphing before our eyes. The Boston Globe found several instances ...

My life is full of things poetical lately. My car pool partner moved away, so to make the commute go faster, I've been searching out aud...

This is only funny if you're pretty familiar with New York Times columnist Frank Rich ... an actual conversation at my house Sunday nig...

Do you use an RSS reader, like Google Reader? Do you know what RSS is? Basically, it's a way to scoop up all the postings from your favo...

When the economy goes south, I turn into a business news ADDICT. We may be in heading for the worst downturn since the Great Depression, so ...