Introduction: Life Review American psychiatrist Dr. Robert N. Butler made the study of the lives of older adults and of the aging process his life’s work at a time when the last years of life were largely neglected in both medicine and public policy. Butler coined the term ageism, by analogy with sexism and racism, […]
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I’ve long been a fan of audiobooks. (You can read about my experience with them here.) But they complicate book discussions by muddying the waters of the standard terminology of literary criticism. In fact, just creating a title for this post took me a long time; according to my notes, I’ve been contemplating this question since
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Just about a year ago I wrote what Notes in the Margin would be up to during 2024. Now, I’m happy with the way last year’s reading turned out, particularly how I ended the year with a sense of accomplishment rather than anxiety and disappointment. Therefore, I’m going to use the same approach to reading
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Here in the U.S. today is national science fiction day, observed annually in honor of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who was born on January 2, 1920. I didn’t read science fiction as a teenager or young adult. To the best of my recollection, I discovered science fiction through television rather than books. My introduction
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Related Post: I’ve been blogging about books since the late 1990s. During that time I’ve thought a lot about why I blog but not so much about how—or rather, how I approach reviewing a book. I’ve put off writing this post for quite a while as I looked back over past reviews I’ve written, especially
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For the past few years I’ve set aside September as a month for rereading works that I’ve continued to think about since I first read them. I don’t remember exactly when I started doing this or even why, but knowing that it will eventually come up gives me comfort all year. And once I started
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The Best Dystopian Novels Although I’m a bit more hopeful since the arrival of Kamala Harris at the top, I’m still quite anxious about the upcoming election here in the U.S. Having lived through the turbulent yet lively 1960s working toward change, I fear an impending regression in not only politics, but also in morality
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Related Posts: Trust by Hernan Diaz © 2022 Date read: 1/31/2023 The four-part structure was initially what drew me to Trust. By the time I got to this novel, I was used to novels divided into sections that presented either various points of view or various time periods. But Trust was different from other novels
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Related Posts: Babel by R.F. Kuang © 2022 Date read: 1/22/2023 Other than Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, I don’t read much fantasy. I picked this book up because its underlying premise is brilliant: bars of silver, when imprinted with pairs of words with similar meanings that demonstrate what is lost
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Related Posts: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda © 2016 Date read: 4/17/2017 Like Drowning Ruth, this novel demonstrates yet another way narrative structure can work to build suspense and meaning. Here the protagonist must come to terms with an event that happened earlier in her life. The only way she can unravel past
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