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Of Books and Love
The best quote I know about the fickle nature of affection comes from W.B. Yeats. Quoting his father, who may very well have been quoting Balzac, Yeats wrote: “A man does not love a woman because he...
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On Re-Reading Auden
For a couple of summers in my early 20s, I worked for the United States Forest Service. In the summer of 1983, I worked on a trail crew in the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness in southwestern Montana. At...
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The Loyal Friend
painting by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot I love books and reading… and I love collecting quotes. On a lazy Saturday morning where all you want to do is to sit down with a cup of coffee and read, some...
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Book Review: Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway
A poor scan of a great cover There remain hundreds of books on my reading “to do” list, yet sometimes I find myself re-reading an old favorite. With poetry this is a fairly straight forward venture. I...
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On Kierkegaard and Backyards
(photo by m.a.h. hinton) MontanaWriter has been on a bit of a hiatus again… a stepping back. Work on other projects and trajectories has been taking time and energy. The end result: there has a been a...
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On the Pile Next to My Chair
A regular reader of MontanaWriter recently emailed me asking me what I was reading these days. Since it is in my nature to read more books at one time than I can quickly recall, and since it is also in...
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In Praise of a Good Place to Read
For the past couple of months, I have felt like a wandering Aramean. A complicated series of furniture misadventures with more plot twists than a Robert Ludlum novel had meant that for awhile our...
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Poem Draft: “The Reading Life”
Poets write about what is nearest their hearts and bones. Those who have followed this blog for any length of time knew that a poem about reading and enjoyment was inevitable. Here it is. Enjoy!
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From Croagh Patrick to Ulysses
I have spent most of my life “studying” Irish literature. But like most of the world, I have never completed James Joyce’s Ulysses. I have given it a few half-hearted attempts over the years, but like...
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Reader’s Notes: Short Stories
As I have said here before, I start a lot of books. The lion’s share I do not finish. When I start a novel or non-fiction book and get to a place where the writing or plot bog down for me, I start...
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Reading In A New Direction
“Amy Lowell” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) This year, in addition to “banning” certain words from my life as much as possible, I have also made a resolution to read only women writers and/or writers of...
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The Twenty-Percent Threshold
“Westerns” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) I read a lot of books on Kindle. Library books and the ones I purchase as deals-of-the-day. One of the things Kindle provides you with as you read is a running...
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The Art of Re-Reading
“Hugo Bust, Bingen am Rhein, 2015” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) “If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.” ~ François Mauriac The winter that will not end...
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Just Finished: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubert were greater artists and are admired, even revered. But Dumas’s art and his personality are inseparable, and he is loved. ~David Coward (London Review of Books) Book...
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Why We Love Books
“Amy Lowell” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) Sometimes it is easy to forget why we fell in love with books to begin with. This is especially true I think of those of us who were English Majors in college....
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Read, Journal, Write
“Looking for Books in Ireland” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) It is Saturday and morning. Here in the North Country it has been unseasonably warm. Yesterday we set a “record” for high temperature for January...
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On Re-Reading
“Another Shelfie” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) “In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that...
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We Are What We Read
“Westport, Ireland” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) As I have said here before, I am not a good television watcher. I always prefer reading. If I am home alone, I almost never turn the television on except...
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Passion and Efficiency
“Another Shelfie” (photo by m.a.h. hinton) A great cold has descended upon the North Country. Schools are closed for the next two days which means I am home with a pile of books and no place I need to...
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Book Review: “Western and Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction in America” by...
Two days off of work last week due to the extreme cold let me get to a book that has been on my shelf for awhile: Cynthia S. Hamilton’s Western and Hardboiled Detective Fiction in America: From High...
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