February 2026

I came across this book only a week before the day that I’m writing this note, and I finished reading it several days ago. Yes, it’s a short book (only 139 pages), but I finished reading it so quickly in large part because I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s an adaptation (and surely an expansion) of the keynote lecture Davis offered at the 2024 Windham Campbell Festival. The book is published as part of the Windham Campbell series entitled “Why I write.”

Davis begins by saying that her initial thoughts about why she writes led pretty quickly, first, to the question why other authors write and then to the question about her own reading. “I do so much reading, I am so often in the company of other writers, and contending with how they write. My reading is my reaction to the writing of other people. I may think that my reading, or anyone’s reading, completes their writing. They write something and then I either read it with pleasure, or read it without pleasure, or decide not to continue reading it” (p. 2).

Only two pages in, and I was hooked. Davis helped me to understand more deeply a conviction I’ve held for a long time — writing and reading are strongly interrelated. In the ever more distant past, I would often tell students that writing about a book they’d read was really an element in reading the book. (I thought this would counter their protest that I required too much writing in my classes; many of them weren’t convinced.) Davis makes both points: writing is part of reading, but reading is also part of writing.

The book is an exploration of what and how she reads, and also of what and how she writes. Her discussion of what she reads has added to the too long list of books that I think I might read. So far, I’m resisting the urge to add George Stuart’s 1923 book The Wheelwright’s Shop to my list (why do I need to know about how wagons were once made?), though even that is a temptation. I no longer shop at Amazon, but even if I did, I prefer the sort of reading advice Davis offers to Amazon’s “since you liked this book, you will probably like that book” algorithm. Her discussions of different authors and books invite me into worlds I didn’t know existed. (Regrettably, in passing she both identifies and intensifies my desire to bring still more books into the house when I already have many books I’ve not yet read.)

If you’re a writer and want to think more deeply about reading, or a reader and want to think more deeply about writing, I encourage you to read this book.

I don’t remember when I discovered John Prine’s music. I’m pretty sure Kris Kristofferson had something to do with it, though I could be thinking that because Kristofferson played a major role in bringing Prine to the rest of the world. I was playing some of his songs as early as the mid-1970s. I started with “Paradise” and “Angel from Montgomery.”

I don’t remember when I first heard the recordings, but I do remember clearly the only time I saw Prine in concert. His stepson graduated from a Nashville high school while we lived there and Prine gave a benefit concert in a small Nashville club. It was just Prine and a sideman (playing guitar and harmonica) on stage for at least two hours. We sat about 20 feet from the stage. It felt like we were sitting in our living room listening to a good friend play his songs. It was a magical night.

Piazza heard Prine sing in New Orleans in 2016 and shortly after that spent a few days with him. That short visit led to an essay in the Oxford American with the same title as the book. It also was the start of a close but brief friendship, brought to an end by Prine’s death two years later. Only months before Prine died, he asked Piazza to write his memoir. The two of them met a couple of times when Piazza recorded John talking about his life. Piazza didn’t get enough in those aborted conversations to write a complete memoir, but he did get enough to flesh out his account of the John Prine he knew. After Prine died, Piazza had conversations with Prine’s brother and others who knew him well. The book isn’t the memoir that Piazza and Prine envisioned, but it’s a moving introduction to the man and his music.

I suppose it’s significant that I’ve had to resist referring to the musician by his first name as I’ve written these notes. I feel like we’ve met. Reading this book brings back that powerful memory of the time John sat in our living room, playing his songs and telling his stories.

A bookstore discovery. I’ve not read anything else by Fadiman, and I think that’s definitely my loss. She writes so well. This collection of seven essays runs the gamut from silliness to the seriously sad. Just a comment on the title essay: If I were part of a family that had a pet frog for 16 or 17 years and then after its death kept its body in the kitchen freezer for years waiting for a time when the adult children were visiting so they could attend the funeral, I surely wouldn’t write about it for the world. But if I wrote about it for the world, there’s no way I could invite the reader so charmingly into the frog’s life and death. Other essays include an account of a magazine published by a group of explorers visiting the Antarctic and a discussion of changes in pronouns. The latter was a good challenge to someone (like me) who has resisted the use of “they” and “them” as singular pronouns: I’m embarrassed to say that it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why I don’t say “you is” when I’m addressing only one person. Why do I say “you are”? Now I know. The book is not a difficult read, but it’s a rewarding one. I’m glad that I picked it up.

I picked this one up after it received last year’s Booker Prize. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed reading it. It was a difficult read. But I will say that Szalay had me thinking about the nature of male toxicity these days — both the toxic environment that shapes men and the toxic behaviors of many men. The word spoken more than any other by the male protagonist was “OK,” as he repeatedly follows the initiative of those around him.

Found prominently displayed on the new arrivals shelf of a local bookstore. The point intrigues me: acknowledging that anything like a utopia is generations and generations away does not mean we shouldn’t work toward it.

As she introduces her discussion of the intimate relationship of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, a long-distance relationship nurtured almost entirely by letter writing, Janna Malumud Smith observes, “You cannot write a letter any more than you can paint a self-portrait without choosing a profile. You might not think about it much as you rearrange your head until it seems right, but you do it” (An Absorbing Errand, p. 139). I read Smith’s book before reading Virginia Evans’s novel The Correspondent; this novel is as powerful a confirmation of Smith’s observation as one is likely to find. The Correspondent of the novel’s title is Sybil Van Antwerp. Sybil is nearing the end of her life, a life in which she has expressed herself in letters to a wide variety of people — family, close friends, noted authors like Joan Dideon and Larry McMurtry, and others. The portraits she paints in these letters, together with the portraits reflected in letters written to her, are of a woman with a strong and gruff veneer that disguises a woman dealing with the tragedy in her life.

When encouraging me to read this book, my wife said that I would be charmed. I was charmed, but the impact was deeper than that. I was moved. At times I laughed out loud. At other times I was on the verge of tears. Sybil’s coming to terms with herself and her past, solidified near the end of the book, left me thinking about my own life. It was a good read.