I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer—although there are those who are enduring this Georgia heat along with me who’d think I’m absolutely crazy to say that! But it’s been a light-hearted (if somewhat madcap!) season of visits to and from dear ones across the country, of kindred spirits returning home from across…
There is something about the long, languid days of summer that begs for a particular flavor of reading, in my mind. I have said this before, but books have their own season for me as definitely as my clothes. I’d no more pull on my cabled wool ‘barn sweater’–so de rigueur for frosty winter mornings–in…
I’ve made no secret of my heartfelt writerly crush on The Rabbit Room, and it is always an honor and a joy to get to chime in on the Great Conversation that’s going on over there. Most recently I’ve aired some opinions on one of the Inklings, Charles Williams, the man C.S. Lewis called his…
Of all my Christmas loves, the books and stories that express the real joys of the season are among the sweetest. Over the years I have amassed a goodly circle of friends that take their indispensable places among the cherished traditions: from the short stories we like to read aloud in the weeks leading up…
At the gentle (and brilliant) suggestion of a reader, I have decided to act upon a notion I had back in the summer, before I even opened the Bookshop at Lanier’s Books, namely, a series of proper introductions to the authors and titles you will find on my shelves. My books are selected with great…
My sister and I have always held that this is the perfect time of year to be reading a Lucy Maud Montgomery book. No matter how many times they’ve been read and re-read—the condition of my beloved paperbacks is quite appalling!—there is just something about September that seems to evoke a mood sufficiently wistful to…
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. The Henry David gem had been buzzing at my mind all day, and all day I had been tenaciously smiling it down. I had smiled it down when I cut out one of the skirt pieces upside down, and when I had to trot back to the store…
Overcome with this image of prayer from George MacDonald’s brilliant and bewildering 1895 romance, Lilith: Some people are always at their prayers.—Look! look! There goes one!” He pointed right up into the air. A snow-white pigeon was mounting, with quick and yet quicker wing-flap, the unseen spiral of an ethereal stair. The sunshine flashed quivering…
We’ve always called him Uncle Will. And we always make much ado about his birthday. We toasted his memory–and his gift to us all–with gallons of hot tea and a Queen’s Cake laced with rosewater. In recitations and tokens and songs. But it was our five year-old Juliet that stole the show and carried the…
There was a fabulous question posed over at The Rabbit Room this morning that all good Tolkies will hail with a joyful recognition: Are you a Took or a Baggins? It reminded me of this piece I wrote for YLCF a couple of years ago after my first wild and lovely sojourn in Middle Earth…
I didn’t realize how desperately I was waiting to hear someone say this until I read it in print: Why quarrel with a writer over realism and idealism? After all an author is a glass through which a picture of life is projected. The picture falls upon the pages of the writer’s manuscript according to…
One of the books on my current reading list (I’ve usually got at least three going at any given time, sometimes more!) is E.M. Forster’s classic on writing, Aspects of the Novel. Here’s a passage I simply had to share: Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning…Books have to…
Well, my mother and I spent yesterday afternoon in the Lake District–via the delightful new film, Miss Potter, which chronicles the literary journey of our beloved Beatrix. It was so enchanting–so altogether lovely–that we were walking on air when we came out of the theatre. That hasn’t happened to me in a long, long time!…
Way back in March I promised to share a new poet I’ve grown to admire. I thought it was high time I kept my word. 🙂 Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) struck a chord with me from my very first perusal of his works. He was called a modern-day Tennyson, and I can see why. His…
What imaginative girl has not been captivated by the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery? With a loving eye and a ready pen she gave to the world a tiny island off the coast of New Brunswick and a little band of girl heroines that have delighted the souls of ‘kindred spirits’ the world over. How…
Anyone who has loved Maud Hart Lovelace’s ‘Betsy-Tacy’ series will no doubt be delighted to learn that these books were basely almost entirely on her very happy girlhood in a small Minnesota town at the turn of the last century. Maud grew up in a loving and supportive family that encouraged her in her dreams…
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