LitBits

The white-faced ibises have disappeared. I used to climb to the rooftop terrace while the sun was splashing colour up into the dawn and watch the dark, graceful arcs of birds float across the sunrise, west to east.

Jeanette Winterson, author of 28 works of fiction including Sexing the Cherry and Lighthousekeeping, recently set fire to a pile of her newly republished books.

Since my last LitBits, two years have slid past, and with them, two surgeries, an ongoing pandemic, and another book begging now to be unpacked. 

Considering the Lego-like malleability of letters and the ease with which new arrangements come into fashion, words have astonishing power — to provoke, irritate, catch a moment or a year in their syllables. Word of the Year is a game we play in North America every December, searching for the one arrangement of those bits […]

Each year when I arrive in San Miguel de Allende, I set my suitcases inside the door and immediately walk out into the town. Yes, the sidewalks still insist we tread single file; the Parroquia still glows pink as the sun sets; the iron benches in the Jardin still hoard the day’s warmth. But look! […]

September is my birthday month, but I would love it anyway, and not only for the crisp, apple-scented air. This time of year smacks of fresh starts, of new teachers and new shoes. The pantry is bulging with fall harvest and bookstore shelves are crammed with a fresh crop of stories. As Wallace Stegner writes […]

Spring strolls in on the heels of the equinox; bumblebee, ladybird, and dragonfly children parade under globo rainbows through the streets. The Virgin’s tears water the sprouting seeds, and books pop up like freshly hatched chicks. Even the pessimists admit a shade of rose in their view.

Year-end is a time of holiday celebration. It’s also a time of taking stock, of looking Janus-like at what has transpired and what is yet to come. A time of resolutions and reaffirmations, and stoking the mind and heart with new, unimagined thoughts.

Fall is prize season, with awards tumbling down like apples from orchard trees. Many bookish folk fashion their winter reading lists from the finalists, thinking to broaden their reading reach. But what if the prizes themselves create enclaves into which only certain writers are allowed?

When I was a girl, these dog days of summer were for lying on the grass, drinking in books like water. Summer still spells reading for me—as do the brisk days of autumn, the warm hearth of winter, the first bright days of spring. Here are a few cullings from my summer bookworld.