Recommended Reading

I'm working on a long post for tomorrow, so today it's just a quick one with some recommended reading, and an update on Tilly's progress.

Our brave girl is doing better in her second week of post-operative recovery. She's now allowed to take gentle, ten-minute walks to build up her strength again...although she still has to wear her onesie (to protect her stitches), and put up with the indignity of a onesie-inspired new nickname, Little Sausage. Here she is in a nearby field, where I took a morning coffee break while she sat quietly beside me, content to watch, listen, smell the wind, and dream of longer walks to come.

Below, a round-up of interesting articles that I've come across recently:

* "Imagination and the Age of Reason: Magic is Metaphor for Power of Mind" by Joanne Harris (Foreward Reviews)

* "Falling under the spell of fairytales and myths" by John Dugdale (Guardian Books)

* "'Get your head out of that book!': Children's stories that inspired leading writers," edited by Antonia Frazer (Guardian Books)

* "A pictorial celebration of the life and work of Joan Aiken" by her daughter, Lizza Aiken (Guardian Books)

* "The Tale of the Seven Stories" by David Almond (Guardian Books)

* "There Are No Recipes," advice for aspiring writers by Ursula K. Le Guin (Guardian Books)

* "Books were my crazy, wise companions in a conservative world" by Elif Shafek (The Pool)

* "Reader, You Married Him: Male Writers, Female Readers, and the Marriage Plot" by Alix Ohlin (Los Angeles Review of Books)

* "Should Ethnicity Limit What a Fiction Writer Can Write?," an interesting essay on a contentious subject, by Susan Barker (The Los Angeles Review of Books)

* "A Lazarus Beside Me," an encounter with W.B. Yeats, by Avies Platt (London Review of Books)

* "Friendly Fire," Andrew O'Hagan on writing, friendship, and his novel The Illuminations (Bookanista)

* "An Introverted Writer's Lament" by Meghan Tifft (The Atlantic)

* "Art is a Form of Active Prayer," on Melissa Pritchard's A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write, by Maria Popova (Brain Pickings)

* "When you lack self-confidence" by Sarah Elwell (Knitting the Wind)

* "Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments" by Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson (The Public Domain)

* "My Gypsy Childhood" by Roxy Freeman (The Guardian)

* "Photographic Pres��ence and Contemporary Indians," a photographic project by Matika Wilbur (Yes Magazine)

* "Our Footprints on the Earth," on defending beauty and wilderness, by Ilira Walker (The Dark Mountain Project)

* "Look, Don't Touch," an essay on children and nature by David Sovel (Orion Magazine)

* "An Uncommon Gratitude," an essay on place, loss, and unexpected gifts by Trebbe Johnson (Orion Magazine)

The poem in the picture captions is from Dark. Sweet. by Linda Hogan (Coffee House Press, 2014); all rights reserved by the author.