On Khaled Hosseini’s trilogy, the choices we can’t undo, and the uncomfortable truth that family is both the wound and the bandage. I’ve read all three of Khaled Hosseini’s books multiple times. The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, And the Mountains Echoed. I know how they end. I know which pages will wreck me. […]
The Books That Know What I’ve Done Read More »
Here are the shifts that transformed me from someone who read maybe 5 books a year to someone who now reads 50+: 1. Stop treating reading like homework. You see you’re allowed to DNF (did not finish) books. You’re allowed to skim the boring parts. You’re allowed to read the ending first if you want.
10 Reading Tips That Changed How I Read (And How Much I Read) Read More »
On loving The Alchemist at twenty-two, questioning it at thirty-eight, and learning that growth isn’t betrayal. I gave The Alchemist to someone I loved when I was twenty-two, convinced it would change their life the way I was certain it had changed mine. They handed it back three days later and said it felt like a greeting
We Don’t Owe Books Our Loyalty Read More »
The heartbreaking “Math” of ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ and why we should stop playing it safe. I find myself returning to this photograph again and again. Paul Kalanithi, forty pounds lighter than he was before cancer, skeletal and exhausted, cradling his newborn daughter in hands that once performed brain surgery. They are both breathing. One
Why Paul Kalanithi Chose Fatherhood While Facing Death Read More »
I bought Theo of Golden because one of my friends wouldn’t stop talking about it. She wasn’t recommending it exactly; that would have been easier to ignore. She just kept circling back to a character named Theo who’d made her reconsider what kindness actually costs. About how a book with almost no plot had somehow become one
Theo of Golden: The Quiet Revolution of Kindness in a Small Town Read More »
Facing terminal cancer, the Carnegie Mellon professor turned one final talk into a message about dreams, kindness, and time. A man walks onto a stage at Carnegie Mellon. He’s got tumors the size of tennis balls in his liver. Three to six months left. Three kids at home under six who won’t remember him. And
The Lecture Randy Pausch Gave for the Children He Wouldn’t Live to Raise Read More »
“To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” – Pema Chödrön Her name, before everything changed, was Deirdre Blomfield-Brown. She had done everything correctly. Attended the right schools – Miss Porter’s, then Berkeley. Married
“We tried!” That was Belle da Costa Greene’s answer when asked whether she had been J.P. Morgan’s mistress. Head thrown back. Eyes bright. Not a flicker of embarrassment. In a city where a woman’s worth was measured entirely by her respectability, Belle looked the question in the eye and laughed. She was extraordinary. And she
The Black Woman, Passing as White, Who Built the Morgan Library. Read More »
The title answered the curiosity that lays between almost all of us. Not the loud, dramatic kind of worry that announces itself and demands attention, but the low hum kind. The worry that sits with you over breakfast. That follows you into conversations you are supposed to be present for. That wakes up slightly before
How to stop Worrying and start living Read More »
This is the story of a woman who should never have been forgotten in history. Born Marion Greener, a light-skinned Black woman in early 20th-century America, she reinvented herself as Belle da Costa Greene to pass as white. This was her only way into a world where women—let alone Black women—rarely succeeded. And succeed she
The Personal Librarian Read More »