“The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet…From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”
The quote above is from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book that had a formative impact on my relationship with words when I was a teenager. The protagonist, Jamie, immediately recognizes the sudden arrival of spring; she feels empowered to cast off evidence of her domestic constraints and interact with the fresh earth she sees all around her.
As April bleeds into May and shafts of warm sunlight begin to replace bursts of chilly wind, it’s natural for us Bostonians to contemplate the idea of “budding.” Flowers burst from trees overnight; at the same time, a fresh crop of book recommendations and essays springs up spontaneously among newspapers, magazines, and blogs, adding pops of charm and intrigue to the lengthening days. Enjoy this collection of articles that snuck up on me and captured my total attention in the same way that springtime does.
Beyond the fog of war: books to help us understand the invasion of Ukraine (Oliver Bullough, The Guardian)
As the media frenzy surrounding Ukraine begins to subside (as is characteristic of global responses to wars and other crises), I’ve begun to recognize my inability to comprehend the full context surrounding Russia’s invasion. Many of us might still be struggling with numerous questions: just how far back do the roots of this conflict stretch? Why does Putin remain so popular in Russia, and how did he rise to power in the first place? If you’re seeking to evade the trap of doomsday scrolling and develop a more substantive understanding of the lead-up to this war, might I suggest Bullough’s list of recommendations?
How do you choose a book? Book lists by other writers are a great place to start (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post)
They say that the best writers are readers; similarly, the most prolific readers turn to writers for book recommendations. Dirda describes the rejuvenating experience of poring over old articles containing famous authors’ book recommendations after finding these articles while cleaning out his office. “Surprises abound,” he notes, and “I’ve run out of space here, having scarcely begun to work my way through these yellowing pages of bookish enthusiasm.” The implicit message in his column is that reading shouldn’t just be work assigned to us by schools or jobs, with each of us being a passive recipient of a pre-defined, pre-approved set of books. Instead, reading should be an adventure we actively pursue for ourselves, and curating our own reading lists based on recommendations by other talented minds is a sure way to get the lifelong adventure started.
The Book That Unleashed American Grief (Deborah Cohen, The Atlantic)
As WWII ended, the culture of reticence and relentless perseverance that had buoyed the United States through so many years of crisis began to develop cracks. Writer and reporter John Gunther stood at the forefront of a massive transformation toward vulnerability in writing and the arts. When he published Death Be Not Proud, he was doing something incredibly bold for the time: baring his private life to the public and giving the world an inside look at his family’s suffering after his son’s terminal cancer diagnosis. Deborah Cohen explains that throughout the war, Gunther and his wife had “tracked for themselves how the patterns of public life—a dictator’s machinations, the betrayal of one nation by another—translated into private relations between husbands and wives, parents and children.” Gunther flipped this concept of “the public shaping the private” on its head and swam against the current, letting his unabashed grief hit the bookstore shelves and setting a precedent for years of self-revelatory writing thereafter. This is an incredible long-form essay on one writer’s boundary-dissolving book and its impact on the public.
A Veterinarian’s Perspective on Writing Animals (Philipp Schott, CrimeReads)
Have you ever considered the connections between crime writing and veterinary medicine? It’s true that diagnosing an animal’s health condition is quite like solving a mystery—animals are limited in their communication capabilities and often downright uncooperative with the standard procedures needed to treat them. At the same time, Schott humorously suggests, animals possess heightened senses and people-reading capabilities that make them a true asset to any crime or thriller novel. The dog that spots a criminal or the adorable kitten that humanizes the intimidating detective? Be sure not to leave them out of your next bestseller!
