25 January 2026 Huxley Buxley’s Brave New World Let me be completely transparent, here: I am writing this book review today because I am midway through composing a 6000-word short story, and I am procrastinating the hard work of the climactic moment. I’ll do it tomorrow. This will be a bite-sized effort by comparison, ideal for launching back into my writing practice since setting it aside a whole week ago. Sometimes we must have compassion for ourselves when we fall out of o

12 January 2026   Witness: On Oliver’s “The Summer Day”   Every day I walk the same 3.4 miles.   Last week, I saw a reel on Instagram of a traffic crossing guard stationed at a street corner for hours each day, who, in that one single corner never found the same corner twice. Her reel was stitched from innumerable clips of all the wild and wonderful and varied things she had the opportunity to witness there without ever stepping even a half city block away.   My husband regul

6 January 2026 Tripping Without Traveling: On James Joyce’s Dubliners About five years ago, one of my Comp I students mentioned with pride that he was reading Finnegan’s Wake , and I did a bit of research on the book to better understand why he believed this was such a feat. Do a quick Google/Wiki search and you’ll learn why, yourself. Then, for some reason, based on that conversation, I had convinced myself it would be some remarkable thing to read James Joyce—he must be exc

31 December 2025   The Queer Account of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase  by Joan Aiken This may be more journal than book review; just a word of forewarning. Also, I am publishing it here a week after its composition without additional review/revision; therefore, a double-forewarning. About a month ago, there it was—a memory: me and my sister, ages perhaps seven and eight, piled with mom into her dark cherry four-poster bed with its lace canopy, listening to the very last (per