A few weeks ago at dinner my brother asked everybody at the table what writers we go back to reread. What a great question! Much more interesting than who’s your favorite writer, which I always find impossible to answer. But who do you go back to reread? This is a whole other matter. Especially for…
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To Read
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 4 Comments
A Three Dog Life and Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas. Both books are memoir and her latest one, A Three Dog Life, consists of essays about rebuilding her life after her husband is hit by a car. (Stephen King calls this book the best memoir he ever read.) An earlier book, Safekeeping, is written more like…
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Nancy Drew and the Goops
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 3 Comments
Recently I discovered an old copy of The Goops – and just seeing that cover again was an instant flashback to being a child. (Did I want to act like a Goop? Noooooo.) I realized the timeless quality of the book, originally printed at the beginning of the last century, when I read it to…
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The Perfect Life At 37,000 Feet
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 10 Comments
The best thing about a vacation is that you can read for hours, days, weeks. And the only good thing about sitting on an airplane for ten hours, 37,000 miles above the earth is that you have nothing else to do but read – no e-mail, no phone calls, nothing but a book and the…
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An Eclectic Book List
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 10 Comments
I’m taking a month off to travel and I’ve been stockpiling paperbacks for the trip. Here’s the list: The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris (Part memoir, part spiritual exploration. I love her writing.) Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear (She’s a friend and…
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by Barbara Abercrombie • • 1 Comment
To Read: I’m rereading one of my favorite novels, Montana 1948 by Larry Watson. It’s one of those perfect novels – the story is so gripping that you can’t put it down, the characters so beautifully wrought that you forget they’re written, and the writing is both transparent and precise. The opening two pages are…
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To Read
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 7 Comments
I’m just reading Western writers this month. I’m impatient with New York and Los Angeles angst, big city stress, mid-western claustrophobia, and deep South drama. I want landscape and weather and self-reliance so I’m reading Thomas McGuane (whose two page essay about horses in Meredith Brokaw’s Big Sky Cooking is worth buying the book for),…
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To Read
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 2 Comments
Julie Hecht’s novel, The Unprofessionals and her short story collection, Do the Windows Open?… I’m going to cheat and use the review from The New Yorker – because frankly I find it impossible to give a coherent summary of either the novel or her book of short stories. (Would anyone who hadn’t ridden the Hampton…
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To Read:
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 0 Comments
Grendal by John Gardner Dark and funny. And even more pertinent today than when published in 1971. (Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal created a stunning opera from the novel that was recently produced by the L.A. Opera Company.) Digging to America by Anne Tyler. If you haven’t read an Anne Tyler novel go immediately to…
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To Read:
by Barbara Abercrombie • • 5 Comments
Carolyn See’s new novel, There Will Never Be Another You. I think Carolyn See is the best writer in Los Angeles and one of my all time favorite writers period. Her latest novel is funny, heartbreaking, and combines her meticulous take on everyday life with her dark view of serious world issues. But somehow she…
