a moon, worn as if it had been a shell: Romance, in Spite of it All

Quotes to Live By

Try not to think about people who are writing facile things on the Internet. Remember the radical ancestor poets who have gone before, especially those who receive less acknowledgement than they should have, those whose genius was insufficiency recognized. When you feel paralyzed by the pointlessness of temporary fashion, or when dull or predictable work is lauded, try new things that will surprise you as you work for the joy of the process, remembering that all a writer needs are four true readers and one of them can be a tree.

Barbara Hillman

Bookworm 2021

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello
Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
Elizabeth Street by Laurie Fabiano
Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
How We Survived by Roz Chast
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Love and Fury by Samantha Silva
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
On Violence and On Violence Against Women by Jacqueline Rose
Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo
Snow Falling on Cedars by Dan Guterson
Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours by Sarah Sentilles
The Actress by Anne Enright
The Blackmailer's Guide to Love by Marian Thurm
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy
The First Free Women by Matty Weingast
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup
Wayward by Dana Spiotta

Bookworm 2020

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Janet Grames
Luster by Raven Leilani
Still Life by Louise Penny
This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein
Homeland Elegies: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
The Baker's Secret by Stephen Kiernan
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Remedy for a Broken Angel by Toni Ann Johnson
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Boy: Tales from Childhood by Roald Dahl
Duck, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice B. Toklas
How To Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
Moody Matterhorn by Heather McHugh
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Places I've Taken My Body by Molly McCullen Brown
The Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Volume One
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Writers and Lovers by Lily King
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Bookworm 2019

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forche
Glückel of Hamelin by Glückel
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Mostly Dead Things by Kristin Arnett
Flash Count Diary by Darcy Steinke
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Fleishman is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Transcending High Conflict Divorce by Virginia Gilbert
A Life Beyond Reason by Chris Gabbard
Notes to Self by Emilie Pine
How to Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Seas by Samantha Hunt
Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Night by Elie Wiesel
Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers by Stephanie Levine
Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce
NW by Zadie Smith
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley
The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Mouthful of Birds by Samantha Schweblin
Why Not Religion by Elaine Pagels
Circe by Madeline Miller

Bookworm 2018

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza
Heavy by Kaise Laymon
Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Past by Tessa Hadley
The Last Cruise by Kate Christensen
Educated by Tara Westover
Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
There, There by Tommy Orange
Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas
Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Pisces by Melissa Broder
Future Home for a Living God by Louise Erdrich
Ruby by Cynthia Bond
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
Heartberries: A Memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot
Love and Trouble by Claire Dederer
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Elbowing the Seducer by T. Gertler
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quattro
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Art of Misdiagnosis by Gayle Brandeis
PriestDaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Bookworm 2017

The Danger Within Us by Anne Lenzer
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Kadian Journal by Thomas Harding
History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
Beyond the High Blue Air by Lu Spinney
The Crossing by Samar Yazbek
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
The Child Finder by Rene Denfield
Her Body And Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
Landmarks by Robert McFarlane
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Montpelier Parade by Karla Geary
Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
The North Water by Ian McGuire
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Seeing Red by Lina Meruane
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Always by Sarah Jio
How to Survive a Plague by David France
Wedding Bush Road by David Francis
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson
The Girls by Emma Kline
ninety-nine stories of GOD by Joy Williams

Bookworm 2016

Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
Monster by Jeneva Burroughs Stone
Ghost Songs by Regina McBride
A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice by Christine Hale
Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton
The Leopard by Guiseppe di Lampedusa
The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas
Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet
La Cucina by Lily Prior
The World's Largest Man by Harrison Scott Key
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
Isabelle The Navigator by Luke Davies
Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
Replay by Ken Grimwood
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
My Heart Can't Even Believe It by Amy Silverman
The Sunken Cathedral by Kate Walbert
The Green Road by Anne Enright
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
The Door by Magda Szabo
H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald

Bookworm 2015

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Ade by Rebecca Walker
Half an Inch of Water by Percival Everett
Right Ho Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
Scamp by Jennifer Pashley
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Life with Jake by Kirby Wilkins
The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch
Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez
Barbarian Days by William Finnegan
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (again!)
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Devotion by Dani Shapiro
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth Alexander
In a Dark Wood by Joseph Luzzi
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
Oh, You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin
When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Eat Me by Kenny Shopsin
The Children's Bach by Helen Garner
After the Rains Came by Alexandra Fuller
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Onbeingness by Sarah Manguso
How to Be Both by Ali Smith
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen

Bookworm 2014

Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In the Woods by Tana French
Life Drawing by Robin Black
Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales
On the Edge by Edward St. Aubyn
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Angel by Elizabeth Taylor
A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolano
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Bark by Lorrie Moore
What Is Visible by Kimberley Elkins
Thunderstruck by Elizabeth McCracken
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
Angel Food by Brittany Tuttle
Euphoria by Lily King
Tribute by Anne Germanacos
John Updike by Adam Begley
Vacationers by Emma Straub
Living in the Land of Limbo edited by Carol Levine
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Atmospheric Disturbances by Maggie May Ethridge
Sextet by Christine Benvenuto
Couples by John Updike
Morning in Serra Mattu by Arif Gamal
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Jamaica Dreams by Rosemarie Robotham
Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
Stone and Spring by Brittany Tuttle
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
A Life in Men by Gina Frangello
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol
Wave by Sonali Deraniyigala
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Bookworm 2013

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Deschooling Gently by Tammy Takahashi
Playing House by Lauren Slater
A Reader's Book of Days by Tom Nissley
Field Notes From Yosemite by Teresa Jordan
A Kiss from Maddelena by Christopher Castellani
All That Is by James Salter
Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Chanel Bonfire by Wendy Lawless
Country Girl by Edna O'Brien
Desperado's Wife: A Memoir by Amy Friedman
Duplex by Kathryn Davis
Falling by Alexandra Fuller
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Hinge and Sign by Heather McHugh
Home by Toni Morrison
I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro
Leaving Tinkertown by Tanya Ward Goodman
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Quiet Dell by Jayne Anne Phillips
Remainder by Tom McCarthy
Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
Tenth of December by George Saunders
The Best American Essays 2012, edited by David Brooks
The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan by Ben Foss
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigolais Thelen
The Mouse-Proof Kitchen by Saira Shah
The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Transatlantic by Colum McCann
Unmastered: A Book of Desire by Katherine Angel
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Wil of God by Carrie Wilson Link
Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Books I read in 2012

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
How to Think More About Sex by Alain De Botton
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen
Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A Novel by Maria Semple
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
Too Good To Be True by Benjamin Anastas
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evision
In One Person by John Irving
Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
The Receptionist by Janet Groth
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
There's a Road to Everywhere Except Where You Came From by Bryan Charles
Daughter of the Drunk at the Bar by Michelle O'Neill
By the Iowa Sea: A Memoir of Disaster and Love by Joe Blair
Canada by Richard Ford
The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn
Modigliani: Man and Myth by Jeanne Modigliani
Use Your Words by Kate Hopper
Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers
The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot
Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn
Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson
Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson
Because of Katie by Karen Gerstenberger
The Guardians by Sarah Manguso
Restoration by Olaf Olafsson
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Life Sentences by William H. Gass
Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner

Books I read in 2011

Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Italian Food by Elizabeth David
Los Angeles Stories by Ry Cooder
Treasure Island!!! by Sara Lewis
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
(Sic) by Joshua Cody
The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
A Lamp in the Darkness by Jack Kornfield
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
The Best American Essays 2011, edited by Edwidge Danticat
A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano
A Year in the Village of Eternity by Tracey Lawson
Show Up, Look Good by Mark Wisniewski
One Day by David Nichols
Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta
The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown
Bossypants by Tina Fey
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin
Orientation and Other Stories by Daniel Orozco
By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham
Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray
The Best of It by Kay Ryan
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Alligator by Lisa Moore
Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust without Reason by Anne Roiphe
Tiger by John Vaillant
Three Delays by Charlie Smith
February by Lisa Moore
Slip by Tanya Savko
The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman
Life by Keith Richards
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey
Framing Innocence by Lynn Powell

Books I read in 2010

Framing Innocence by Lynn Powell
Even Silence Has an End by Ingrid Betancourt
The Red Thread by Ann Hood
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Father of the Rain by Lily King
Saying Goodbye edited by Julie Rember
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li
Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs
Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
Tinkers by Paul Harding
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Remedies by Kate Ledger
Waking by Matthew Sanford
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA by Bonnie J. Rough
So Much for That by Lionel Shriver
The Shaking Woman by Siri Hustvedt
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The Three Weismanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt
The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Lit by Mary Karr

Books I read in 2009

A Short HIstory of Women by Kate Walbert
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
My Father's Tears by John Updike
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout
Songs Without Words by Ann Packer
The Music Room by Matthew Fiennes
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Madeleine is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Born Round by Frank Bruni
Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson
The Centaur by John Updike
Perfection by Julie Metz
The Slippery Year by Melanie Gideon
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
Our Kind: A Novel in Stories by Kate Walbert
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers
This Lovely LIfe by Vicki Forman
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Philips
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
A View of the Ocean by Jan de Hartog
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Matters of Life and Death by Bernard MacLaverty
Crazy Love by Leslie Morgan Steiner
The Collected Short Stories of Frank O'Connor
Seizure by Erica Wagner
Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg
The Women by T.C. Boyle
Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken
The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Romance, in Spite of it All

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