[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]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.
Fierce and Burning Questions—LitBits #13
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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.
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Like a Bird in the Spring—LitBits #12
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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.
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January LitBits 2019
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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 of alphabet that perfectly reflects where we stand at this moment in the sweep of history.
Others play a different game: Words that should be wiped from our mouths.
December LitBits 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]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! The giant Christmas tree has moved to Plaza Civica. From our new digs, I hear the bells of not three churches, but five.
This first walk settles me in the same way that running my fingers over the spines of my books settles me: reading the titles, even thinking of them, lifts my heart into a place that is at once familiar and everlastingly new.
Fall LitBits 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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 in Angle of Repose, “There was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
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Spring LitBits 2018
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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.
Winter LitBits 2017
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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 LitBits 2017
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] 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?
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