Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. Viking, 1996.
For most of us, reading is an act of pleasure—entertainment, an absorbing quest for knowledge. A good book can provide a break from our humdrum routine or from difficult emotional or physical demands. According to Alberto Manguel, reading is not an entirely innocuous activity.
A […]
Margaret Visser. Much Depends on Dinner. Grove Press, 1986.
Margaret Visser’s title is Much Depends on Dinner. And her book proves that dinner depends on much. She deconstructs an ordinary home-cooked meal, one that would be accepted by North Americans as unremarkable—corn with salt and butter, chicken with rice, lettuce with olive oil […]
Armstrong, Karen. Through the Narrow Gate. St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Silence. Isolation. Repression of the senses and the intellect. Public humiliation.
Prison? No. Life in a Roman Catholic convent, a life that leads through a narrow gate.
I came to this book in a roundabout way. A bad cold kept me home […]