www.annemoore.net

Can a book be grieved? It’s not a person, after all, or a beloved pet, or a plant you’ve cared for and coaxed into bloom each spring. It’s a book. I’ve said before that books are like lovers. Private companions. We take them to bed, tuck them into our bags, panic (as I did) when

It’s a rare treat to see the life’s work — or much of it — of a living artist. Photographer William Eggleston (b. 1939) has been a quiet sensation since 1976, when his color photographs were the first ever to be shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Before that, color photography was the

Finishing her umpteenth young-adult novel set during World War II, my ten-year old daughter pranced around the kitchen: “I llllllove the Holocaust.” I choked on my coffee. “You mean, the literature of the Holocaust. Hitler, the Nazis. The ultimate bad guys.” Alex agreed, then told me all about a Danish girl sent by her grandmother

With friends and family griping about the dearth of good new reads, it’s worth a look back at the best of the last decade. That’s always my default: Nothing new? Look back. Explains reading all of Hardy, and Richard Yates, repeatedly. Of course, the last decade gave us the me me me “Eat, Pray, Love”

When I began this blog, I made a choice to write about books and art and cities and food I admire. Too easy to pick on the second rate! But as a new decade dawned, and “best of” lists spawned, I couldn’t help thinking about the piles of books in my home and office, books

Blockbuster shows of museum art enthrall — and exhaust. Yes, it’s astonishing to see the treasures of Tutankhamun, the Picasso retrospective, Matisse beside Picasso, Calder’s circus. But there’s a deep pleasure in being drawn to a museum to see a single work, on loan, set among its peers. There you’ll find no headsets, no clots

Some books enchant, others repel. The other day I closed a book after 30 pages and drove it directly back to the library branch it had been borrowed from. I pulled an illegal u-turn and parked in a tow zone, risking all to be rid of it. Clunky writing, horrific story; thank you, no! Another,

Should you trust the narrator? Depends on the book. Two I read this summer set me up to believe that its main character, and narrator, was seeking to repair a significant love (a wife, a daughter). Each starts with a similar premise — I need to get her back — then widens in the telling,

When I first read E. M. Forster’s “Where Angels Fear to Tread” I thought it a twisted comedy. (It is.) I read it again years later and found it sad — still a comedy, but threaded with tragedy. Loss, loss and more loss, complicated by squashed emotions and cultural misunderstanding. Why do we reread? I

My friend J.M. reads nonfiction only. When she makes this brash statement, I mourn for all the fiction she misses. Sure, some fiction I’ve read in the past year has been flawed, but most fiction takes me for a ride, makes me laugh and smile and think about other lives. Nonfiction, I find, is more

The last warm, sun-filled Sunday in September and I was heading to the underground Harris Theater to see Baryshnikov dance. When I mentioned my indoor plans for the afternoon, my neighbor snickered. I worried, too: would the great male dancer embarrass himself? Pas de tout. I’d seen Baryshnikov dance many times, in the mid-to-late 1970s,

In Chicago, we savor every warm sunny day in September. Last gasps of summer happen all over the globe, of course, but in Chicago each day of warmth and sun is one we soak up and store within ourselves. We’re like Lionni’s Frederick, who uses those rays to soothe his fellow mice during the bleak,

I recently finished an exasperating read: an unhappy couple can’t bring themselves to divorce. If they part during the spring, it will color every spring. If they tell her father…if they tell their son…. The book is “Some Prefer Nettles”, by Junichiro Tanizaki, Vintage International, $13.95, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. I loved it. The

When I describe our place in Quebec, few people can fathom our unplugged life. No television, telephone, cell calls or texts, no computers, newspapers or mail service, no stores nearby, no need to get in a car. Yes, we have a roof, beds, bathrooms, running water, comfy couches, electricity. We’re not camping. Indeed, certain services

The New York Times ran a provocative (well, it provoked me) article the other day on independent, super-expensive college counselors. Fees ran a high as $40,000. It wasn’t the cost that provoked me: it’s the fact that adults turn to a professional for one of parentings’ last and most satisfying adventures. Just when you think

My daughter accuses me of doing nothing at our summer house in Quebec. Ha! I practice yoga after breakfast, kayak late morning and swim fast to the island and back (about a mile) late afternoon. In between: I read. I read small books and big books, fiction and nonfiction, old books and those newly published.

I had three days in New York and did what I always do in a great world city: eat well and see art. First stop: John’s Pizzeria (278 Bleeker St.) Baked in a coal-fired brick oven, it really is the world’s best thin crust. John’s is two small rooms; a line trails down Bleeker Street

My sister had more time than I to tour the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and stopped into the Cy Twombly show (through Sept. 13.) The next day, she had to go back, and wanted me to see the Twombly show, too. She even persuaded her “love art, dread museums” 10-year-old

The New York Times ran a breezy piece recently about summer reads aimed at women. I turned to it excitedly: I’m a girl, I love to read. Surely there’d be something on the list for me. Nope. What to read during the summer? Do we really seek out “lighter” reads in the warmer months? I

I’m often in awe of museum art; how or when it was created, how it’s presented. It’s a quiet, passive pleasure. Delight, joy: at a museum? That’s rare. Olafur Eliasson is the Danish-Icelandic artist whose installations can be seen and experienced at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago Ave.) through Sept. 13. Go.