Reading a novel can be just like daily life: you’re moving a million miles an hour. A great, suspenseful novel makes you want to sprint to the finish even if you’re enjoying the journey. Poetry – not so much. Poetry…
Fiction
I read Arne Weingart’s new book of poetry in the bathtub: PERFECTION. Levitation for Agnostics seems meant for soaking and reflection. None of the poems are pretentious or tiresome, and though I would describe more of them as wistful than cheerful, they all…
Valentine’s Day was serious business when I was a kid. First there was the box decorated at school with construction paper hearts and white paper doilies: it needed to be flawless in both design and execution. Then each classmate needed…
I once told my husband not to worry about Valentine’s Day, back in the early years of our marriage. He had been sick, I think, and maybe in a demanding period at work. Ladies, do you think I meant for…
You can’t ignore it. Valentine’s Day is the 1000-pound gorilla in the drug store, the grocery store, the mall. It’s coming – and fast! I’ve personally gotten a headstart on the chocolates, seeing as I was at Godiva anyhow. I’m…
There’s a place some secretly shop for books, at least on occasion. It’s not Amazon. Louise Hanson, physician and Medical Director at Vanderbilt Student Health, shares her thoughts today on a recent intriguing find there… From Louise: When Jennifer asked…
Just to clarify: it’s me that failed, not my book club. I intended to finish Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale before Thursday night rolled around, but we all know about good intentions and the roads they pave. With my book club’s…
The good professor, Roger Moore, brings Vanderbilt to Bacon today with his engaging review of The Incarnations, by Susan Barker. (Thanks Roger! I love it when you do that!) He illuminates a darkly fascinating novel that you’ll want…
Today, regular Bacon Contributor Laura Cooper loves on the “Neapolitan novels” by Elena Ferrante and explains why she’s becoming a fangirl! The New York Times recently named the fourth novel in the series, The Story of the Lost Child, one of its…