What I Read in 2021
I did not read for pleasure this year until May. The previous November, on my fiftieth birthday, I applied to graduate school having scrolled through subject areas for one that sparked more than a basic interest, as I enjoy many different fields. Most of early 2021 was spent climbing the peaks of academic texts, each chapter another foot safely planted, or an effort to find better footing. In this endeavor my synapses traced an old muscularity, underdeveloped but there--ropey, always reaching, sideways and upward and sometimes back down in order to ultimately ascend. Recollections of my Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit, read in May Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile, read in June Near the end of my first semester I sensed that my son needed me more, or that I should be home more often during his long days of remote learning. His father had stopped allowing him to see me on weekends, relying, suddenly, on the original text of the divorce decree written six years prior, when our son was 12. Now h...