How to Read

The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture of article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us?...So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim!

-Randall Jarrell, quoted by Alan Jacobs in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Packing for the Cape!

Kidlit The Middle Moffat, Eleanor Estes The Defense of Thaddeus A. Ledbetter, John Gosselink Reckless, Cornelia Funke Penny From Heaven, Jennifer L. Holm Unexpected Magic, Diana Wynne Jones Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson The Savage, David Almond, illus. Dave McKean A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, Gardy D. Schmidt Adultlit Cover Her Face, P. D. James Gilead, Marilynne Robinson Joy in the Morning, Betty Smith