Unabashedly Bookish

I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. Read more...

I just wanted to take a few minutes to thank you all for making Physick Book such an amazing success. Read more...

More and more, I've come to believe that difference between kids with high self esteem and those with low self esteem is an engaged parent. Read more...

I've spent a lot of time cataloging suffering. Even before I was sick, I tried to sort out which was worse -- depression or estrangement, being left or being widowed, extreme poverty or extreme narcissism. Read more...

I am interested in faith and people who have it. I often write about it (essays, outlines for a novel, character sketches, a screenplay?) and think about it most days of the week. Although I am skeptical, I do pray. I do not go to church. I will always be Catholic (like I will always have brown eyes) but may grow into something else as well. Read more...

Mother years are like dog years, so much changes year to year. When I wrote The Middle Place, my girls were in diapers. Now they're in elementary school. Read more...

Before he became one of the more notorious figures in American political history, Watergate mastermind E. Howard Hunt was a novelist -- and not just any novelist, but a Guggenheim Fellowship-winning novelist who beat out Truman Capote and Gore Vidal for the honor. What happened? Read more...

I would have thought that a late stage cancer diagnosis would have shoved me straight into adulthood. But it actually had the opposite effect—my parents came out of retirement, so to speak, and coddled me in a way that would have never happened under any other circumstances. They read to me in bed, tip toed around while I took naps, they gave me little treats for no reason. Read more...