There was much interest in my post on Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic, Dune, probably because I asked the question, “How often should a water conservationist bathe?” So here’s a little more background. Dune was a groundbreaking ecological novel, originally published in 1965 by Chilton Books, a press known for auto repair manuals. (it was […]
“To the working planetologist, his most important tool is human beings… You must cultivate ecological literacy among the people.”–Frank Herbert’s Dune Frank Herbert’s Dune, winner of the Nebula and Hugo Awards in 1966, is an ecological classic. In the early 1970s, I lived for a few months with a family of professor/political activists, who, in […]
Was I excited about the Golden Man Booker Prize? No, of course not. I was barely aware of it. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient is the winner of the prize, which was established to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the Booker. It was (sort of) determined by popular vote at the Man Booker Prize […]
On the Fourth of July, I’m reflecting on climate change. We live in a divided America, but the issue of climate change unites us. Everyone is against floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and 90+ temperatures. Rah, rah. But what can we do about it? On Saturday night, thunderstorms caused flash flooding here. Three hundred twenty-nine people were […]
I do not read beach books in the summer, unless they are literally beach books: I recommend the Odyssey, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic, and Gail Godwin’s Grief Cottage. For summer reading projects I prefer classics, the kind for which you need an introduction and footnotes. One summer my husband and […]
I’m not unsociable. I am chatty. Sure, I’m a bit prim. My idea of fun is going to the library, or reading Juvenal in Latin with my husband at Cafe Diem, a coffeehouse in Ames. I do think my diversions are comical. Who in this day and age has a Latin club? And I […]
Drink a glass of water before you read this, because it’s very, very hot. So far this month we have had 13 days in the nineties. It was 90 degrees when I took my bike ride this morning and it was 95 when I got home. And so I flopped down in the decadent […]
Novels in translation. We love them, but are occasionally baffled. I recently read two highly-touted novels, Georgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and Theodore Fontane’s No Way Back. The structure of each novel is elegant, but the writing is uneven. But I did prefer the former to the latter, as you see in these […]
Some favorite books of the year (and more below) My husband and I started making “Best of the year” lists in the ’90s. We typed them up in an amateurish newsletter and mailed them to friends. Our friends laughed at our lists and made counter-lists. Did we really think the best book was X, the […]
Last-minute gifts are a bad, bad idea. This is your life. This is your wife’s life, too. That is why I, your personal shopper, am interceding. Your stressed-out wife may or may not want a diamond necklace from Gales–I don’t know her, but I wouldn’t –but she will not be amused if you present her […]
mirabile dictu 