www.annemoore.net

Our dog was misbehaving in Pythonga so every morning after breakfast I’d take him for a long walk up the road. There he’d run ahead of me, into the woods, then scamper back, checking in with me. It was raspberry and almost blackberry season, so I brought a small tub with me, filling its base. That

My sister Mary Beth settled into the porch hammock each day, steadily making her way through Michael Ondaatje’s “The Cat’s Table,” a book I’d loved and given her earlier in the year. Ah, Pythonga: There’s nowhere better to give yourself over to a book. It’s quiet, the lake shimmers, there’s few chores. Breakfast and dinner

“This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in your imagination suddenly becomes a part of the tangible world. It matters not how many ranges, rivers or parching dusty ways may be between you: it is yours now forever.” — Dame Freya

A few years ago, my friend J.M. and I went to see Terrence Malik’s mesmerizing film “The Tree of Life.” It is long and dreamy and digressive — other movie goers bailed — but she and I hung in there and were mostly glad we did. All it needed, as J.M. pointed out, was some

When a best friend heads to Italy for a month to research a travel guide the only logical thing to do is follow her. Not for the whole time, of course, but for a few choice days, along with a friend she enjoys, too. http://romewithkids.com/ That’s how I found myself, quiet happily, in Rome earlier

“My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate.” — Henry Miller And so it goes with Ian McEwan’s dozen or so novels, linked not only by their author and his smart prose but also by the extremes I’ve experienced

I’m stealing this subject line from David Lebovitz, the funny, smart, worldly blogger who writes from Paris about life and food and cooking and things in France and other places. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/02/things-im-liking/ He’s liking small cassoulet bowls, a variety of oils, buckwheat cookies… Here in Chicago I’m liking the service — from booking the reservation to

Some books should be sold shrink-wrapped with a box of tissues. Or two. That would be Jojo Moyes’ “Me Before You,” which brings new meaning to book grief. Louisa Clark is 27 and newly unemployed in an English tourist town where there aren’t a lot options. She’s not educated or worldly. She lives at home

I didn’t plan to, but found myself reading Grace Coddington’s delightful memoir “Grace” during this most recent New York Fashion Week. Kismet! Coddington, you may recall, is the imperious red-headed creative director who didn’t plan to but stole the show from Anna Wintour in “The September Issue,” the 2009 documentary about the inner workings of

Does it matter where you read a book? A “beach read” on a city bus? A retelling of “The Iliad” on a Southwest flight? The story of 9-11 lakeside in Quebec? A good read, by definition, transports. But sometimes it’s just plain fun to read a book where it’s set. That’s why I’ve read each

“Indeed, reading might even kill them, as was said in the Scots Magazine in 1774, to have been the case with the wife of the First Earl of Effingham. One night, in her rooms at Hampton Court, she became so absorbed in her book that she failed to notice that her clothes had caught fire.

Can a great novel — a classic! — have a bad ending? Joan Acocella’s thoughtful post on the New Yorker’s “Page Turner” blog calls out the lame last halves and endings of, among others, Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” Charles Dicken’s “David Copperfield,”and Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.” Her point: the characters’ intense struggles — for freedom,

The 23rd Chicago Humanities Festival ended mid-November; I’m sorry to see it go. A month long event, the Festival offers one hundred programs centered on a single theme. This year, America. There was a one-man play, a cabaret, and talks by scholars, writers, educators, thinkers, politicians, and comedians. I felt like I was back at

My eldest son and I have an ongoing discussion about “The Shelf,” an imaginary but distinctive resting place for the best war literature. He referred to it after I finished Karl Marlantes “Mattherhorn,” a 640 page slog — in the best sense of the word — through the Vietnam War. (We agree to disagree on

It’s worth repeating: I love to read, and write, a life. A memoir of the Paris/New York life of Richard Seaver, an American publisher, is hard to give up. What a man, what a life. Seaver (1926 – 2009) was teaching math and coaching wrestlers at the Pomfret School in Connecticut (a funny, charming chapter)

Two of my dearest, smartest friends read no fiction at all. Ever. Lately I’m drifting into their camp. I’ve already railed about the grotesque resolution in Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” but it’s worth repeating: I see people carrying that book and think — ugh, just wait. That book that should be wrapped in warning tape.

The New York Times Book Review last Sunday ran a q & a with the editors of the Norton Anthology, that brick of a book we all lugged around during high school and college. This was the last question: Why study literature? M.H. Abrams: Ha — Why live? Life without literature is a life reduced

My husband’s family have been members at Pythonga since the early 70′s. Every year I invariably pack more books than clothes and still can manage to run out of things to read! You have to have the “boat book”, something if it gets wet, no big deal. Then the “porch book” and “beach book” and

I read all the time but there’s one place on earth I read most: Club Lac Pythonga in Quebec. My husband’s family has had a summer home there since the 1960’s. It’s a magical place deep in the woods, cut off from the Internet, cell phones, newspapers, cars. A central kitchen serves family dinners, freeing

Sure, there’s thrillers, but for me the everyday is full of suspense: will the tremendously fat (educated, interesting) man leave his Brooklyn home? If so, how far will he get? Once out, will he be able to climb the stairs and return? Liz Moore’s “Heft” takes us into the narrowed world of Arthur Opp, a