Diary

Bookstores and Lovers
It’s always exciting to read about a bookstore opening, rather than closing, though in the case of Albertine, the new bookstore hopes to revive the interest in things

Three’s a charm
Complaining is my default mode, so I thought I’d challenge myself to comment on something unreservedly good on offer this fall season: thrilling books by women writers. The

Rules of Engagement
After a very long summer break I finally feel up to putting a toe in the murky social media water where my blog perforce resides. There’s so much

By the numbers…
I’ll be staying with a friend for a few days in Paris later this summer. To thank her for her hospitality I decided to treat her to dinner

Rereading oneself
Spinning My Wheels Procrastination: Take Three. Failing to progress on my summer projects, I reread the work where I left it last year. Although rereading literature can be

When Work is the Prize
Procrastination, Take Two: Yes, it’s that time of year in academia. The spring semester is almost over, except, of course for the grading. The papers straggle in or languish

Media Manners: Stop Thief: A GPS is tracking you!
Last week I received an email that began: “I am writing to inform you that you are using copyrighted material on your website which appears to be taken

Infusion for Two
Last week my friend Aiobheann Sweeney and I discovered we were having an infusion (a k a chemo) the same day in the same cancer center. Our cancers

Welcome. Some musings on my current preoccupations with the worlds of illness and the worlds of books, the vicissitudes of living with cancer and the need now, in my eighties, to imagine what new writing might be.