Kyra Maya Phillips's Blog, page 4

“I wish now that I had let him buy me a tuxedo, that I had let him be a dad”: Steve Martin on childhood pain, art, and being a son

Feeling slightly uninspired and unsure of what to read next, I’ve been spending the last few days re-reading bits from books I delved into many years ago. I underline and earmark all of my books to death, so it’s easy to notice what I was particularly moved by. Steve Martin’s memoir, “Born Standing Up,” is truly tremendous. Here, Martin chronicles his early life and his rise to stardom with honesty and sharp wit, making the book an absolute joy to read. Heartbreaking and funny, this is a tru...

My 16 Favourite Books of 2016

Darkness Visible by William Styron

Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dubliners by James Joyce

Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Stoner by John Edward Williams

The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

A F...

Joan Didion on self-respect

From her seminal 1961 Vogue essay on self-respect (also found in her sublime collection of meditations, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem“), Joan Didion expounds upon the true meaning of knowingwho you are (failures and all):

“The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation—which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something that people with courage can do without.

To do without...

Zadie Smith on the distinction between pleasure and joy

Credit: Esra Roise, http://www.esraroise.com/news/2013/4/...

I adore this essay. Here, Zadie Smith sublimely – and funnily – describes the subtle difference between pleasure and joy. Pleasure, she writes, is relatively easy to find, instant, and replicable. For Smith, a pleasurable experience is embodied in a pineapple popsicle from a stand on Washington Square, or the ecstasy she experiences people watching on the streets of New York City. Joy, on the other hand, is a mo...

Zadie Smith on pleasure and joy

Credit: Esra Roise, http://www.esraroise.com/news/2013/4/...

I adore this essay. Here, Zadie Smith sublimely – and funnily – describes the subtle difference between pleasure and joy. Pleasure, she writes, is relatively easy to find, instant, and replicable. For Smith, a pleasurable experience is embodied in a pineapple popsicle from a stand on Washington Square, or the ecstasy she experiences people watching on the streets of New York City. Joy, on the other hand, is a mo...

My Shakespeare by Kate Tempest

A stunning (as always) poem by Kate Tempest. Words below:

He’s in every lover who ever stood alone beneath a window,

In every jealous whispered word,
in every ghost that will not rest.
He’s in every father with a favourite,
Every eye that stops to linger
On what someone else has got, and feels the tightening in their chest.

He’s in every young man growing boastful,
Every worn out elder, drunk all day;
muttering false prophecies and squandering their lot.
He’s there – in every mix-up that spi...

Five Brilliant Children’s Books With Girl Protagonists

Rosie Revere, Engineer

I love reading with my two year old, Leo, all the time. Though as time has gone on, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to find great, inspiringbooks with female characters who aren’t princesses who somehow fall in the safe, strong arms of a brave knight. Many of our favourite books are centred around male heroes(The Incredible Book Eating Boy, Iggy Peck, Architect, Where The Wild Things Are, Stuck), though over time I have found a few (too few) brilliant books with lea...

My 15 Favourite Books of 2015

Jennifer Egan’s Illustrated Bookshelf

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

A beautiful memoir from the guitarist of the epic and pioneering band, Sleater-Kinney.A true deviation from the regular rock ‘n roll story of destruction, this book is a tale of losing, and then finding yourself, in music.

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

A phenomenal, illuminating read, even if you’re not into poetry. In this collection of ten letters, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke advises a...

Nora Ephron on the pleasures of reading.

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too r...

What I’m Reading (& rereading).

In mid 2015, with the end of an over three year long book project, I decided that I would read more. Lots and lots more. While books have always been a fixture in my life, the intensity of their presence has ebbed and flowed throughout the years. I realised, during times when I wasn’t reading much, that I didn’t enjoy life without books. Readingmakes me happier and more alert to the world around me.

To keep track of what I’m reading, I’ll update this list as I go along. I’ll be sharing more...