Merry Wanderer of the Night:
nonfiction

Leif Reads is a monthly feature I work on with Aths of Reading on a Rainy Day. Each month we choose a book that covers an environmental topic and discuss these topics and the book.

I've really enjoyed reading Coop this month because it's fitting in nicely with a long term comic I'm working on about sustainable agriculture. If you haven't noticed I've been thinking a lot about the disconnect that has happened between Americans and their food. While it's great that Michael Perry is able to live on his family's farm and teach his children about how food is grown and made I'm starting to realize that most people have never even set foot on a farm. A couple of weekends ago I went to an organic farm to do some volunteer work through an Iowa City organization called Local Foods Connection. Even though I grew up on a farm and around agriculture this farm was in a completely different league. I was amazed by the variety of produce they grew and the methods they used. The farm I visited started everything in a greenhouse and then moved it to a field.

If you have the ability to visit a farm or do some work with a farmer I would encourage you to do so. Next time you're at a farmer's market talk to the farmers there and find out what methods they use to grow their produce. It saddens me when I hear people talk about how lettuce comes from the bag. They don't realize that the lettuce in their bag was grown in Mexico and shipped to a plant where it was bagged and then shipped to their grocery store. They don't realize that the food they're putting in their mouths has gone through miles and miles of travel to reach them. They have no idea who is on the other side of that lettuce.

Even if you're not into gardening, visiting farms or farmer's markets, you might find it fruitful to grow a little something. I don't have my own yard but we're working on growing some things on our patio. Even if you don't have the option to do that, if you live in an apartment with one window you too can grow something. Jason and I are growing coneflowers, sunflowers, basil, and a few other things on our kitchen counter. It's set by a window and we water it every once in awhile. We planted all of these things just a few weeks ago and as you can see they are growing like crazy. If nothing else it's an exercise in understanding. Children often grow something small as part of their science classes in elementary school, but adults can learn from growing a flower in their kitchen to. It will help you understand that everything starts somewhere, even the book I'm reading came from a tree.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

I took a little break from my Montaigne readalong this month for no reason other than I felt I needed one. I am now picking up from where I left off.

Essays Read this Week:

1. Judgements on God's ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence
2. On feeling from pleasures at the cost of one's life
3. Fortune is often found in Reason's train
4. Something lacking in our civil administrations
5. On the custom of wearing clothing
6. On Cato the Younger
7. How we weep and laugh at the same thing

Favorite Quotations:
"The world is not so completely corrupt that we cannot find even one man who would not gladly wish to see his inherited wealth able to be used (as long as Fortune lets him enjoy it) to provide shelter for great men who are renowned for some particular achievement but who have been reduced to extreme poverty by their misfortunes; he could at least give them enough assistance that it would be unreasonable for them not be satisfied" (Something lacking in our civil administrations).

"Just because I feel that I am pledged to my individual form, I do not bind all others to it as everyone else does: I can conceive and believe that there are thousands of different ways of living and, contrary to most men, I more readily acknowledge our differences than our similarities... My one desire is that each of us should be judged apart and that conclusions about me should not be drawn from routine exempla" (On Cato the Younger).

General Thoughts:

The first essay that really grabbed my attention in this group was Something lacking in our civil administrations. Montaigne talks about an idea his father had about a place where people could report their wants and needs. Kind of like Craigslist. If someone needed a worker they would report it, and if someone needed work they would report it. Ideally these two people would be matched up. Montaigne said that men are perpetually in a state of want because they are unable to find those who are able to fulfill their needs. At the end of the essay he talks about two great scholars who died of hunger. He felt that if these two men had only come forward about their situation there would have been people willing to help them, but since they did not they died.

On the custom of wearing clothing was interesting mostly because it showed a sense of modern anthropology that put Montaigne ahead of his time. He talks about how humans probably don't need clothes because our bodies should be able to adapt to climates just like other animals. This stems from ideas about the New World and travels of Herodotus, which both include civilizations who lived in the nude. He mentions that we leave sensitive parts of our bodies, ears, nose, fingers and so on bare to the world, so why do we cover up the rest of our bodies?

The final essay I read, How we weep and laugh at the same thing was actually a little disappointing. I love the idea of conflicting emotions but I didn't feel Montaigne really pushed it. Most of his examples were about a person looking at someone else and seeing them from a different perspective. Perhaps they were happy they had won a war but realized that someday they would all lose the war between life and death. The essay was only four pages and it just didn't feel finished to me.

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Leif Reads is a monthly feature I work on with Aths of Reading on a Rainy Day. Each month we choose a book that covers an environmental topic and discuss these topics and the book.

This month we're talking about Michael Perry's Coop, the story of his year working on his parents' old farm with his wife, daughter, and baby on the way. The book isn't overtly environmental, but I think it's a little bit more accessible than some of the other books Aths and I have read for this project. And that is of course because Coop is a story with characters and problems--not that the other two books we read were not-- but I'll just say I was able to read Coop for over an hour last night and didn't feel tired at all.

In the first third of the book Perry really seems to outline the differences between his childhood and the present. Similarly to the graphic novel Essex County, Michael Perry's viewpoint works well for all readers because he talks about leaving the farm and coming back. He has lived both lives. Or at least it works well for me since that has in some ways been my own experience in life. The childhood he describes is truly from another time, when children were always expected to do chores at home and not everyone had a TV. Technology was something special and strange. It wasn't a given. I especially liked the passage about an old stove his parents had in their house:

"A neighbor came to help with the lifting, and once the stove was reassembled upstairs, its squat bulk anchored the entire first floor. Mom cleaned it up and rubbed it down with blacking, and although the shiny bits were dimmed and pitted, they did take a polish, and the blue Monarch logo still scrolled beautifully across the white porcelain enameling of the oven door. She rarely baked in the stove, but we often came in from wood-gathering expeditions to the scent of smoked ham and vegetables in a cast iron pan that had percolated on the stovetop all day long, and as we ate, our caps and mittens dried in the warming ovens flanking the central stovepipe and its butterfly damper, which reminded me loosely of the Batman logo. On cold school mornings, we tussled to see how many of us could plant our hindquarters on the warm oven door." (22)

While I think this passage is just nice in general, good images and language, I think it shows how differently people used to think about things like gathering wood, heating a stove, and so on. It was just a normal way of life. But now we have technology to do a lot of these things for us which distances us from our lives. We don't think about where the warmth of our homes comes from or where our food comes from. And while this technology is great, I think it has mentally made us a little complacent.

That seems to be what Coop is really about so far. Stepping back in time with your family and trying to live a different way. I'll be interested to see what else we can pull out of this book to understand the environmental aspects of farming Perry experiences.

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My hope is that I'll be able to be so passionate and intense about A Field of Silence by Annie Dillard that you will all go out and find a copy of it in some book (probably Teaching a Stone to Talk) and read it immediately. Unfortunately when I am super excited about a book or an essay I become a blubbering idiot. But let's give it a go. The essay is about fields and farms and spirits. Dillard once lived on a farm with another couple, "an ordinary farm, a calf-raising, haymaking farm, and very beautiful." She spends a few pages talking about what she loved about the farm, the clutter of it, the loneliness of it. She gets the description exactly right when she calls it "self-conscious." Then she says something that made me squeal like a pig I was so thrilled to read this section of this essay.

"My impression now of those fields is of thousands of spirits--spirits trapped, perhaps, by my refusal to call them more fully, or by paralysis of my own spirit at that time--thousands of spirits, angels in fact, almost discernible to the eye, and whirling. If pressed I would say they were three or four feet from the ground. Only their motion was clear (clockwise, if you insist); that, and their beauty unspeakable.
There are angels in those fields, and, I presume, in all fields, and everywhere else. I would go to the lions for this conviction, to witness this fact. What all this means about perception, or language, or angels, or my own sanity, I have no idea."

I really can't explain why I loved this section so much. I think it perfectly encompasses the mystery of fields and the feelings I had about them as a child. I really liked Annie Dillard before, but now I love her. I love her. She goes from describing the loneliness of fields and the country to understanding how she is surrounded by tradition, by those who lived there before her. By the farmers who farmed and died and left their fields. It's just so completely beautiful.

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I picked up Memory of Trees for no other reason than the subtitle A Daughter's Story of a Family Farm. I love reading about farms and agriculture, but it's rare that I see a story from the point of view of a daughter. I was especially intrigued because that is what I mostly write about-- Iowa agriculture from a daughter's point of view. Gayla Marty writes about her family's Minnesota farm during the sixties and seventies. She watches as the farms around her become more industrial and watches her own family's farm come to an end. She punctuates the end of each section with a little vignette on a tree from her life. The book is nonfiction, but its really poetry.

"North, east, south, west. North is the pasture behind the barn and the lane along the fence that leads the cows to the woods. East are the railroad tracks and highway. South is town, three miles away. You can see the white towers of the mill across the swamp and fields. West is Gramma's house, which is also Uncle and Auntie's; just beyond it is the woodshed, then the orchard, then the creek flowing under the road into the swamp. In springtime the creek is swollen, the swamp turns into a lake a quarter mile wide" (4).

I love stories about the Midwest but I never see them and I certainly never see them done well. Marty captures the essence of rural Midwest life so well it almost brought me to tears. I've always wanted a book that showed me my life and this was it. The one book that really captured it all for me. I had an extremely intense connection with this book because Marty was able to get the time and place of her story exactly right. By the end of the book I felt like I grew up with her.

Her exploration of place goes beyond the Midwest to farms in Switzerland and Tanzania where she traveled late in high school and early in college. She sees everything through the eyes of a farmer's daughter, and because I shared that bond with her I felt like I saw these places in the most realistic way.

There were a few issues. I thought the book was a little too slow in parts, although overall I thought the pacing was right on and the slowness fit well with the location. Most of my other problems were with Marty's decisions, which have nothing to do with the writing and really nothing to do with her either. It was more about me projecting my own desires onto her life.

This is a book I seem to be recommending to everyone lately even though I have a feeling not everyone will love it. If you're a farmer's daughter though, and you love that about yourself, I really think this is a must read.

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The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. On moderation
2. On the Cannibals

Favorite Quotations:
"True victory lies in your role in the conflict, not in coming through safely: it consists in the honour of battling bravely battling through." (On the Cannibals)

"I wish everyone would write only what he knows--not in this matter only but in all others. A man may well have detailed knowledge or experience of the nature of one particular river or stream, yet about all the others he knows only what everyone else does; but in order to trot out his little scrap of knowledge he will write a book on the whole physics! From this vice many inconveniences arise." (On the Cannibals)

General Thoughts:
On the Cannibals is frequently taught in nonfiction writing classes, or at least it is at Iowa, which is why it makes me think not so much about the essay itself as nonfiction writing. That last quote in my favorite quotations about writing what you know, I think that is my biggest takeaway from this essay. Montaigne is really interested in judgement and the the human tendency to think there is only one way to do something. Your way. Culture to culture we all do things a little differently and it's easy to think of the world only in your terms. I think part of what essays do is help the writer recognize the way he or she does something while still pushing their boundaries and looking at how others might do it.

So then how do you write about your experience in another culture and still acknowledge that you are not an expert on that culture? This seems to be a huge problem in travel writing. The best travel writing, I usually feel, is either completely inward or completely social. In the inward variety the author really doesn't experience much but rather writes about the displacement of being in another culture and ruminates on that. The more social kind involves the writer talking to people of that culture but acknowledging his or her outsider status and understanding.

I am struggling with this quote a little bit because it doesn't acknowledge the writer's ability to go seek out first hand knowledge from an expert. Maybe I'm struggling because I become annoyed by people who do very little research and try to pass themselves off as experts. Part of the reason I love John McPhee is he always acknowledges how stupid he is on a given topic, even if he knows more than the average person. This seems like an extremely important aspect of essay writing--no wonder I'm pulling it from Montaigne.

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David Small's father was a doctor who thought he could cure him through radiation. Instead the radiation made things worse and gave his son cancer. Rather than telling David his parents sent him into the operating room where David emerged voiceless after a vocal chord was removed. He thought the surgery would just be minor. David expressed himself through drawing and years later you can tell it paid of because the drawings in Stitches: A Memoir

are some of the most beautiful I have seen in any graphic memoir.

You can imagine how many emotions are portrayed in this book and what is truly amazing is how Small does this without words. He uses negative space and tiny changes in body language to tell the reader how each character is feeling. There isn't a lot of writing in this book but I came away from the story feeling like I knew the characters just as well as those in my favorite novels. Even though many pages were wordless I found myself looking at each panel longer than I would have had there been words. I really explored the intricacies of every drawing to help me understand the story. In some ways I liked the wordless panels more.

Anyone interested in memoirs or medical stories should definitely read this, but even if you're not interested in either of those things I still think this one is worth a try. It really transcends those two labels--by which I mean it's just a beautiful story. Small pulls you into his world much like he pulls himself into the paper he's drawing on. He doesn't judge anyone in his family for their choices, even though it would be easy to do, and manages to make you sympathize with all of them. In this way he acknowledges the private lives and thoughts of every person and in turn the importance of giving each human a chance for understanding.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities
2. On affectionate relationships
3. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boetie

Favorite Quotations:
"How many of the things which constantly come into our purview must be deemed monstrous or miraculous if we apply such terms to anything which outstrips our reason! If we consider that we have to grope through a fog even to understand the very things we hold in our hands, then we will certainly find that it is not knowledge but habit which takes away their strangeness." (That it is madness to judge the true and the false)

"And in truth what are these Essays if not monstrosities and grotesques botched together from a variety of limbs having no defined shape, with an order sequence and proportion which are purely fortuitous?" (On affectionate relationships)

General Thoughts:
I can't decide if the order of Montaigne's essays just happen to line up with my thoughts this year or if I'm just reading too much of my own thoughts into his writing, but over the past several weeks it's seemed like Montaigne and I have just been on the same page.

This week I read On affectionate relationships, which was fitting because I've been thinking a lot about friendship. When I went home over spring break I had a strong desire to get back together with old friends. I did get together with a couple of friends I've stayed in touch with since high school, but I didn't see either of the people who were really my best friends in high school. I did run into some people who were good friends of mine, and it was just like seeing a stranger. The loss of old friendships has been painful for me. In On affectionate relationships Montaigne describes a kind of friendship in which the friends will do anything for each and other and are really a part of each other.

"Moreover what we normally call friends and friendships are no more than acquaintances and familiar relationships bound by some change or some suitability, by means of which our souls support each other. In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I loved him, I that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.'"

I just really loved that quote because I think it perfectly sums up my ideas on friendship. The majority of my friends now are really just familiar relations. We have parties, go out for coffee, and so on, but I don't feel like I know them that well or like they know me that well. It's crazy to think about now, but the only people who I feel really know me are my friends from high school who are still my friends today. I never thought I would stay in touch with so many people from high school, the whole point of college is to branch out and meet new people right? But I've found that friendships are largely disappointing, and the only people who really have my back are the people who watched me through my awkward teenage years.


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I'm not much for mysteries or thrillers, but I love true crime and true mystery. It adds so much to the mystery when you know the events are true; it always makes me feel like I'm in on a big secret of some kind. Lately I've been listening to audiobooks of books I already have on my shelves in an effort to clean my shelves off faster. I have a lot of time to listen to audio while I am working, so I decided to do this with Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman because I wasn't sure I would really enjoy the book after hearing mixed reviews of it. The audio is read by the author, which was fine. He added a lot of drama to the story with his British accent.

The story is about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but really more about one of its avid contributors. When the OED started they put out advertisements for readers. People who would read books looking for words and then write quotations where the word appears in an effort to trace the evolving definition of the word. You can see that this would be a tedious process, but the man in the story, Dr. W. C. Minor, had a lot of time. Because he was in an insane asylum.

Professor James Murray, the man in charge of the OED, becomes curious about the prolific Minor because of the volume of letters he sent to the OED. Murray has no idea the man is mentally unwell, and this is where the story really gets interesting.

I can't decide how I really felt about this book. It was a great story and something I'm interested in. There was a lot of drama and intrigue which made it fun and really different from what I expected, which was a straight forward account of the making of the OED. If you're interested in dictionaries and words then I'd say this is one worth checking out, but if you're really not I'd move on. The story got a little slow in parts and I didn't find myself running back to finish it.

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This review is actually two reviews in one. I read I Saw You over the last couple months and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz last month. These two graphic novels could not have been more different, but I enjoyed them both tremendously.

I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections

is an anthology edited by Julia Wertz which has short comics inspired by Craigslist's Missed Connections section. It is totally black and white and a couple of my favorite comic artists, Liz Prince and Lucy Knisley, were featured in the anthology. I must say that anthology was a bit hit and miss. The missed connections that actually happened to the comic artists tended to make better comics than the ones based solely off advertisements. It also felt like the same trope was repeated: old creepy guy after hot young girl. It seemed a little too easy. The comics that stood out made this one worth reading, and I love the "Me too!" moments I got when the artists talked about love. I'd say this is one to check-out from the library if you can, unless you're really interested in missed connections like me. If nothing else you'll learn a lot about comic artists you've never heard of before. I'll definitely look for Julia Wertz's look in the future, as her comic (on the cover) was one of my favorites.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz graphic novel could not be more artistically different from I Saw You. Skottie Young's artwork is extremely colorful and detailed. This is one example were the artwork worked perfectly with the story, always the happy medium in graphic novels. I read The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid but I don't remember it too well since I've seen the movie many more times. As far as I can tell the graphic novel sticks with the story of the book. The pictures add a lot though. Shanower is great at combining cute and creepy, which I think describes The Wizard of Oz extremely well. The Scarecrow was my absolute favorite character-- he is totally creepy but in this adorable cuddly way.

My only complaint about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is it relied too much on the reader's presumed familiarity with the story. I'm familiar with the story and I still felt like there were some plot holes. Overall it's a good story and I felt the artwork added more to the story than the imagines in the film did. Definitely a must-have for any Wizard of Oz fan or anyone who enjoys Tim Burton-esque artwork and storytelling.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Essays Read this Week:
1. Same design: differing outcomes
2. On schoolmasters' learning

Favorite Quotations:
"We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." (Seneca, On schoolmasters' learning)

"Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own."(On schoolmasters' learning).

General Thoughts:
I had an intense connection with On schoolmasters' learning. I'm nearing the end of my third year in college and I've had a lot of frustration towards the university experience. I'm glad I've had the opportunity to go to college. I'm lucky to have great parents who help me pay for school and encourage me. I've had some great professors at the University of Iowa. And, after all, if I wasn't an English major this blog might not exist and that would be a shame.

That said, I don't know if I feel I've learned that much in college. In school we are required to learn a lot of information so we can take a test or write a paper, which is what Montaigne talks about in this essay. As Seneca said, "We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life." When I leave with my diploma will I really walk away any better off than I was when I came here? I will, but I'm not sure any of those things I've learned come from the classes I've taken or if they come from the experiences I've had. Life experiences. Experiences I might have had with or without college.

"We allow ourselves to lean so heavily on other men's arms that we destroy our own force." Is this the burnout I've experienced over the last year? Maybe. I feel like I'm constantly told what to think about something, what to see. I used to have my own opinions but now I have to prove everything I say using someone else's words. It's mind numbing.

Questions:
1. If you're in school do you feel like we are fed knowledge without learning anything of value?
2. If you're out of school what do you think you came away with besides a degree?

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Paper Darts prompted writers to write a memoir in three sentences or less for a flash nonfiction contest. While the title says memoir, I think a lot of these are little essays. I'm only going to talk about the winner, Yielding to the Glory of the Gnarled... but I encourage to read more of the submissions! They are only three sentences long so I know you can read a few. If you read others let me know about your favorite.

When I was a child, they diagnosed the fire in my joints and encouraged me to fear every step I took, every action I made. As I grew older, I challenged the limits they put on me by running through the fire — as far as I could go — and yielding to the glory of the gnarled, twisted, burning healing process that followed... Today, I limp with exuberance... the confident gait of victorious warrior, destined to run forever. --Kim Opitz

I really love this and I can see why it won. The language is so poetic and it almost reads more like a prose poem than an essay. Poetry and essay are melding a lot right now, I've seen essays in the form of poems all over the place. I'm very excited about this phenomenon because it's really pushing the idea of what an essay is. These three sentences tell a story so succinctly, which is something I doubt most people think of when they hear the word essay. My impression is that most people think of long drawn out arguments.

You can tell that in Yielding to the Glory of the Gnarled each word, each punctuation mark, was chosen very carefully. I love how "gnarled, twisted, burning healing process that followed..." fades, leaving you to imagine what the healing process felt like. The sentences move through time easily, "When I was a child," "As I grew older," "Today."

What do you like about this piece? I would love it if some of you tried to write your own three sentence memoirs and shared them with me in the comments!

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There has been a lot of talk about memoirs lately, most of it has been negative. Even though I pride myself on loving nonfiction I'll admit I've moved away from memoirs over the last couple of years. There are just so many poorly written ones and too many celebrity publicity stunts. Devotion seemed like it could be different, if for no other reason than I was interested in the story. Dani Shapiro writes about her experiences trying to find her faith again, both in a religious and personal sense. I think a lot of people go through this drifting feeling, the kind of feeling that forces you to look for some answers. Somewhere. Shapiro has had a lot of loss in her life. Her father died early, she never had a good relationship with her mother, and she came scarily close to losing her son. When it seems like everything has gone wrong it's very easy to become faithless, which Shapiro does early on in her life. Through Yoga and meditation she begins to try and find some quiet, which eventually leads her back to the religion of her heritage: Judaism.

When I started this I was a little worried it would be another Tales of a Female Nomad fiasco. A book I wanted to like, but just couldn't bring myself to agree with. Instead I was inspired. They say if you didn't like a book it probably wasn't written for you. I could see a lot of people wouldn't like this book, but Devotion came to me at just the right time. While I haven't necessarily been struggling with religion I have been struggling with turning the constant worrying and anxiety off. I've had problems with turning into myself and figuring out what is going on. In short, I could really relate to Shapiro.

As I skim through this book and look at the sections I underlined, I realize I read this book as a kind of devotional. Picking out things I found inspiring, muttering to myself Remember this every day as I turned the page.

"Writers often say that the hardest part of writing isn't the writing itself; it's the sitting down to write. The same is true of yoga, meditation, and prayer. The sitting down, the making space. The doing. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Unroll the mat. Sit cross-legged on the floor. Just do it. Close your eyes and express a silent need, a wish, a moment of gratitude. What's so hard about that? Except--it is hard. The usual distractions-- the clutter and piles of life-- are suddenly, unusually enticing." (117)

I'm not going to pretend this is a book for everyone, because it certainly is not. But if you've found yourself grappling with any of the questions I mentioned above, if the passage I shared speaks to you, if you're just looking for a relatable read, I think you should give Devotion a try. You might surprised by it. Not everyone is interested in religion, but for me reading is a kind of meditation. Books are what I turn to when I need to figure things out. In that way I could really relate to Shapiro, and I thoroughly enjoyed her memoir.

The author of this book is very enthusiastic about doing Skype chats with book groups, follow this link if you are interested! To read more reviews of this book check out the TLC Book Tour schedule.

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The essay editor of Wag's Revue came to talk to my literary magazine publishing class today and I was impressed by how sizable the magazine's nonfiction section was. I've been browsing small lit mags for awhile and it seems like most of them throw nonfiction in as an afterthought. Wag's Revue seems to have a few essays in each issue, and they can all be read online. There is a short essay called Birdwatching in Fresno by Steven Church in issue seven which is very representative of poetical nonfiction writing. I've written several recent posts about misconceptions concerning nonfiction (like my last Sunday Salon, and Birdwatching in Fresno really pushes the definition of "essay."

"The bird doesn't suspect and won't chase what doesn't move, what has only recently roosted, relocated, separated and plugged into the seismic shifts of jobs and geography. And he cannot know how you feel caged by the noise, pressed and petrified like the prairie dogs back home in Kansas who duck back into their holes when a raptor glides over the flats--even though you've done nothing wrong, nothing but act like a prairie dog scratching in the yard."

This passage really struck me because I'm attracted to language that deals with nature but also has a dark edge to it. This piece is very short so it's heavy while you're reading it but once you've finished there is a sense of relief. I liked this essay because it illustrates how essays can be topical while still being literary. If this wasn't labeled as essay I'm not sure most people would give it that label, particularly readers who don't think they like essays. If you were convinced by my post last week and want to try an essay Birdwatching in Fresno might be a quick one to see how essays are different from their common perception.

Even if you're not interested in the essay you should certainly check out Wag's Revue. It's an online only literary magazine and there is actually some quality writing in it, which is surprising to me after perusing several small online literary magazines. If you love blogging and reading but don't have a lot of experience with literary magazines this would be a good place to get started.

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My mom always asks me why I love essays so much. "I always hated essays when I was in school. I hated writing them and I certainly wasn't searching them out to read for fun." This seems to be the attitude a lot of people take towards essays.

It's unfortunate that creative essays share the word essay with academic essays, because they are completely different. I have to write academic essays for class. I have to read academic essays for class. I don't care much for either practice, even if I am a literary theory person. I mean, I like it as a form of study, but I don't search out academic essays to read on the weekends.

When you say essay to me, these are the things that come to mind. Joan Didion. Travel writing. Montaigne. Ryan Van Meter. Exploration. Narrative. Story. Dialogue. Chuck Klosterman. Michael Chabon. The Believer. Creative.

I'm beginning to realize that when I say essay to most other people this is what crosses their minds: boring.

This is what you make me do when you call essays boring.


I'm sure there are people out there who truly do hate creative essays and do find them boring. My guess, however, is that the majority of people do not. If you open your mind to the idea that a creative essay can be creative, interesting, innovative, you might be surprised by the amount of great writing out there you are missing. And it's all over the stupid name of the genre. This is why a lot of nonfiction enthusiasts have taken to calling it by different names. Creative Nonfiction. Literary nonfiction. Nonfiction writing. But to me these are good names for the practice of writing nonfiction creatively, and not so good for the practice of writing short creative nonfiction pieces. I suppose you could call it just that, short creative nonfiction, just like short stories.

In essence, however, short creative nonfiction pieces are short stories. The generally accepted layout is a little different, but they are essentially the same thing. I think if you explore some essays you will find writers you identify with, writers who thrill you, and writers who make you see things in a different way. At the core, this is what essays are to me: Pieces of writing which make me see things in a new way. And what is there to dislike about that?

If you're interested in reading more essays, please check out my weekly Saturday feature Awesome Essays, or if you looking for something more classical, check out my Montaigne Mondays to explore the father of the essay.

Do you already love essays? Are you thinking about giving them a try? What can I do to make you consider reading an essay?

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Every month Aths and I are reading one eco-centered book for our feature Leif Reads. To find out more about this feature visit the about page.

With all the snow falling this year a lot of people think the signs of global warming are over. In reality, all of this snow is just more proof of the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. More carbon dioxide in the air means the air holds more moisture, and that moisture has to go someplace which is why we've had record snow and rainfalls recently. Since there is more rain on the ground and there needs to be somewhere for it to go we experience floods. As Bill McKibben points out in Eaarth, "a river that has to carry more water takes up more space... the river [the road] running next to is getting wider because we now live on a planet where warmer air holds more water vapor and hence we have bigger storms. There's no room for the road to shift" (61).

This is something that really hits home for me because I've experienced two pretty monstrous floods in last three years. One where I live now, Iowa City, and one where I grew up, Des Moines. While you may not care about the natural problems with flooding, I'm sure you care about the people whose lives are changed by them. "After such a disaster, researchers report, 'people feel inadequate, like outside forces are taking control of their lives" (75). This is a huge problem right now. Our earth is not the only thing changing, we as people are changing because of these things we've done to our earth.

Flooding in Colfax, Iowa, where my dad grew up. This flood was just last summer and washed out the majority of the fields in area. Photo source.

I walk by this building every day, but during the flood of 2008 the door was blocked off by water. Photo source.

We all know flooding happens, but it's important to make the connection between the amount of snowfall we see and the amount of flooding we have. Snow is frozen, but when it melts that means there is more water in our rivers. More water than our rivers can hold.

Have any of you experienced a flood?

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The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.

Note: I'm posting this on Thursday rather than Monday because I was participating in a giveaway hop on Monday.

Essays Read this Week:
1. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
2. One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without good reason
3. On punishing cowardice
4. The doings of certain ambassadors

Favorite Quotations:
"... that it is with pain as with precious stones which take on brighter or duller hues depending on the foil in which they are set: pain only occupies as much space as we make for her" (The taste of good and evil things depends on our opinion).

"The man who is happy is not he who is believed to be so but he who believes he is so: in that way alone does belief endow itself with true reality" (The taste of good and evil things depends on our opinion).

General Thoughts:
The longest essay I read was That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them, which is probably why I have the most to say about it. Montaigne spends quite a bit of this essay talking about pain and death, which was attractive to me this week because I have thumb injury causing quite a bit of pain. He says the most painful part of death is not death itself, but the time we spend thinking about it. Death, he says, is actually the release from pain. This basic principle can be moved to other parts of life though. For example, I spend a lot of time thinking about writing my papers, but once I finish the paper I find it's actual quite painless and relieving. If I would just quit thinking about the paper and write it I could save myself a lot of pain and misery.

I really liked the second quotation I posted from this essay though. It seems like the more negative energy you put out, the more you find yourself in a negative state of being. If you believe you are happy and put out positive energy, good things will come to you. This isn't always true, but I think there is something to be said for it. I've recently been dwelling in negatives so it seems like a lot of negative things have happened to me. In reality as many positive things have happened as negative, it's just easier to focus on the negative for some reason.

I did tsk tsk about halfway through this essay when Montaigne talks about how crazy women are for putting themselves through the pains of corsets and other crazier things (flaying themselves alive to have a fresh color in their skin?) just to become beautiful. Clearly Montaigne lived during a different time, but he doesn't acknowledge why women were driven to do these things, probably because no one thought about it much. But that is a story for another day...

Over the course of One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without a good reason and On punishing cowardice I felt like Montaigne was relying on Nature to explain new human values. He talks about how humans are going against Nature because of new technology and broken traditions, and what this means for humans. Just funny that this argument continues to go on today.

From The doings of certain ambassadors I came away loving the first idea of the essay. He says when he meets other people he tries to bring the conversation back to the subject each person knows best. I thought this was a great idea and one I should observe more frequently.


Questions:
1. Do you believe that having a negative/positive attitude changes the way you feel about yourself or your life? Do you think you can apply "positive spin" to your own reality?
2. What subject are you an expert on? What would others want you to talk about?

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The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is a book I never wanted to admit I'd never read. I felt like it was something everyone read when they were much younger than me, thirteen or fourteen I figured. It's been on my TBR for a long time even though I've never owned a copy. Even though I'd never read the book, Anne Frank Huis was one of my must sees while in Amsterdam. Just because I didn't read the book didn't mean I didn't know the story. Unlike my experience with Dachau and The Book Thief, I was immediately overcome with emotion upon entering Anne Frank Huis. It's a totally different experience, and for me, a much more powerful one.

Anne Frank Huis does not have any furniture, but the walls are done like they were when the Franks hid there. In the center of the rooms are glass cases with artifacts from their time. What really got to me though, were the pictures of Anne Frank at the very beginning of the museum. She looks so happy.

Throughout the house there are quotes from her diary printed on the walls. It was as if she was telling her story to you, which I guess she was. The experience was also powerful for me because I had so many things in common with her. A love of reading and writing, nature, bicycles, and as a teenager I fought with my mother constantly and was extremely close with my father. When reading her diary I found it difficult to read the parts about her mother because I knew she would never get to experience the close relationship with her mother that I've had with mine.

I can't really review her diary, that seems unfair. It is slow in spots but overall a worthwhile read.

"The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature's beauty and simplicity.

As long as this exists, and that should be for ever, I know that there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer."

I purchased my copy of the diary at Anne Frank Huis and also purchased The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography

as a companion. It is an absolutely wonderful companion because it tells the before and after of the story and gives insight into what other characters' experiences were like.

The artwork is more traditional than I thought it would be, but there are some seriously disturbing images of Anne and her sister after they were found and sent to a concentration camp. I think I got a little more emotional looking at those images than I did reading her diary. The experiences are extremely different. While reading the diary I thought about how normal Anne's thoughts were for a girl her age: boy, friends, ambitions. That was what made it difficult, she represents the every girl, which makes you realize something like this could have happened to you. Reading the graphic biography gave me a lot more insight and history into her family, the experience of being in hiding, and what happened to the family after.

If you've never read The Diary of a Young Girl, I would highly recommend it and I would recommend reading the graphic biography after. It seemed to be a more fulfilling experience. If you've read the diary, you might want to try the graphic biography-- it might answer some of your unanswered questions.

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To be a lover of nonfiction is a dangerous and confusing thing. I have become aware of a major difference in the way readers who primarily love nonfiction shop over the way readers who primarily love fiction shop. When you go to the bookstore and you look for a fiction book, there is generally one place you're searching. Maybe two if you like YA or three if you like romance or western. If you love nonfiction there are an unlimited number of places you might find your books. This can be dangerous and frustrating.

For example, after a recent trip to Half-Price Books I purchased seven books and they were each in a completely different section.

• The first place I always look is in Essays and Memoirs, which is generally only one or two shelves of a bookcase (in a normal store there might be one whole bookcase). In this section I found Coop, which is a memoir, I suppose, of Michael Perry's life as a farmer and parent.
• I moved to the Sports section where I found The Lost Art of Walking, a history and discussion of walking.
• Nearby was travel, where in the further category of Iowa travel I found Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America

  

  , a profile of a town in Iowa.

• I went to graphic novels and found the graphic memoir Blankets

  

  .

• I caught up with Jason in the Science section where I found The Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old MacDonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat

  

  on the one shelf of sustainable agriculture books.

• From sustainable agriculture I moved towards nature writing where I picked up The Control of Nature

  

  , a book of essays by John McPhee.

• I ended by trip in the close-by section of Green Living, which had a really neat copy of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

Seven books. Seven sections.

Can you see why loving nonfiction is a dangerous and frustrating process? Dangerous because, as you've just seen, it's very easy to hop around the whole store and find something you're interested in in every section. It's too easy, especially in a store like Half-Price Books, which organizes its categories down into smaller categories.

It's frustrating, however, because if you are looking for a specific book there can be at least three places it will be located. Is it in essays and memoirs? Is it in environmentalism? Is it in cookbooks? I've found Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in every place. Even from the books I purchased you can probably see some overlap. The Compassionate Carnivore, The Control of Nature, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Coop could have easily been found in the same section, but for some reason Half-Price Books distinguishes them. The distinguishing factor might be something as arbitrary as what type of writer wrote the book. Was it a journalist? A farmer? A scientist?

Part of this is just that the majority of the books in a bookstore are nonfiction, and bookstores do distinguish all the nonfiction by subject because that is how most people look for it. But when you're a general lover of all types of nonfiction it gets frustrating when there isn't just a single section titled Essays that contains all the books of essays. Since nonfiction is a constantly evolving genre (I'm not saying fiction is not, I'm saying literary fiction has a more established, concrete history) it's difficult for a lot of readers to make the distinction between literary nonfiction and what I would consider "How to" nonfiction. How to travel in Mexico. How to become a Buddhist. How to farm sustainably. Versus. My travels in Mexico. My experience as a Buddhist. My experience as a sustainable farmer.

Do you read nonfiction? Do you find yourself running around the store looking for a book? If you are a fiction reader, how many sections do you generally look in?

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The New York Times is looking for essays on modern love by college students for a contest they are currently holding. I read last year's winner, Want to be My Boyfriend? Please Define by Marguerite Fields. It's a charming, real essay about the questions our generation has about love. Questions about monogamy and exclusivity. Fields describes her experience in the middle of everyone going against monogamy and rooting for multiple experiences, while she finds that this is not what she wants for herself.

She has a great sense of self, which is something I feel a lot of young nonfiction writers lack, and she is humorous without going overboard,"For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll say I’ve dated a lot of guys. It’s not that I’ve gone out anywhere with a lot of these guys, or been physical with most of them, or even seen them more than once. But there have been many, many encounters.
I’ve met guys in the park, at the deli, at galleries, at parties and on the Internet. The Internet idea came from thinking that if I could sift through people’s profiles, like applications, I could eliminate the obvious lunatics."

I think this section does a good job outlining the way love functions for young people today. We are constantly surrounded by reminders of it. If it's not a couple holding hands on the street it's the couple getting engaged on Facebook. We all know how Facebook has taken the importance of your relationship status to a catastrophic level. This isn't something Fields addresses, just one other factor to consider in the role of relationships in today's world.

Fields goes through the whole essay cooly, clear-headed, unaffected, until you reach the end and realize that she is not as unaffected as we thought. I was surprised by how well she pulled off that trick, for the majority of the essay I was frustrated with her, I didn't see the point in the essay if none of these encounters meant anything to her or changed anything about her. Then I reached the end and realized what she was trying to say all along.

You can read the whole essay at The New York Times, and if you're a college student with an essay on love you can enter this year's contest.

What would your story of modern love be about?

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