Column: Connect with one another with a good book
Amy Wilson Sheldon/Special to the Crier
We’re isolated, we’re hunkered down because of the weather – and maybe we’re a little bored too? Winter during a pandemic: It can be the pits. Our hypothetical watercoolers may be obsolete (not to mention non-sanitary), but I propose we try to bring watercooler culture back with…books. So often, we view reading as a solitary activity. Yet well into the 17th century, reading was actually a communal activity. In fact, 18th century England was a high point for the parlor “read aloud,” as greater access to current fiction led to “elocution” as a popular pastime.
Letters from readers: Words matter
Letters from readers
Words matter
Often, we’re told that we need to do more than talk. While understanding the sentiment implied in the previous statement, devalues words in particular and language in general. We are suffering from the false notion that words and language mean little. A case in point played out in front of us on Wednesday, Jan. 6.
A group of self-described “patriots” who’ve listened to hateful, abusive, and racist language for the past few years took those words to heart and produced the ugly actions witnessed, not just by our nation but on the world stage.
James Comey and Truth in Government
Joe Klein talks about Comey’s “Saving Justice,” and Elisabeth Egan discusses Peter Ho Davies’s “A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself.”Hosted by Pamela Paul
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James Comey’s “Saving Justice” arrives three years after his first book, “A Higher Loyalty.” Joe Klein reviews it for us, and visits the podcast this week to discuss, among other subjects, how the new book is different from the first.
“It doesn’t differ very much at all, actually,” Klein says, “except for one thing: He rehearses all of the confrontations he had with Donald Trump in both books, but in the second book he places that in the context of the need for truth and transparency in government, which I think is a valuable thing. The book is a repetition of the first book, but it’s not an insignificant repetition because of the context that he’s now placed it in.”
, by Laura Tunbridge (Yale). Focussing on nine pivotal works, this study, equal parts musicological and biographical, complicates the simplistic portrait of Beethoven as an isolated, single-minded genius. Although he seemed inclined to rebellion and irreverence, he still relied upon a close circle of friends and patronsâespecially as he began to lose his hearingâand saw his fortunes as bound up with theirs. His music also testifies to his political awareness. Tunbridge writes that âFidelio,â his only opera, âroots him as a man of his time rather than allowing him to float free of worldly concerns, a transcendent genius.â
, by Seb Falk (Norton). The figure at the heart of this exploration of medieval astronomers, philosophers, and physicians is John of Westwyk, a brilliant fourteenth-century Benedictine monk who created an equatorium, a kind of analog computer for determining the positions of the planets. As John passes in and out of the historical recor
For centuries in literature, extended accounts of pregnancy, birth and early parenthood have been conspicuous by their absence. Now, happily, they’re multiplying like rabbits: Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s