Recommendations
Small Press Love
_w140_h140/Instagram%20Indie%20Books(1)_06210329.jpg "Small Press Love")
by Johanna Stoberock
I’ve been reading a lot in recent months. I set a challenge for myself last fall to read a book a week. I haven’t been able to keep up every week, but I’ve done pretty well so far. Part of the reason for the challenge was trying to figure out Instagram—it turns out that it’s super fun to take pretty pictures of books. And, once the snow went away, it became super fun to take pictures of books in my garden. But it was also a way to wake up the reader in me, to remember that I became a writer through being a reader first.
The Perfect Craft Book (it's not Wonderbook, even though I love Wonderbook, too)
by Johanna Stoberock
A few years ago, having become aware of some gaps in my education, I started reading craft books about writing. There are a lot of them out there, and some of them are very good.
A Cake for Passover
by Johanna Stoberock
When I was twenty-six, and living in Seattle, and in my first year of graduate school, my fellow grad school friend and I decided to host a Passover Seder. We were both far from home, both living in a city that made it feel unexpectedly strange to be a Jew, and, as new friends, it felt good to have a project to work on together. Invitations were sent. Ten or so people from our program agreed to come. My friend and I split up cooking tasks.
Augusta Sparks Farnum is Going. Are You Coming?
by Johanna Stoberock
When I first moved to Walla Walla thirteen years ago, I thought I would never find a way into the landscape. We arrived, by plane, in August. Looking out the window as we flew from Seattle east across Washington state, it was easy to see the world changing: snow covered mountains, green sloping hills, then brown with the occasional circle of irrigation green. There were fires in the mountains that August, as there are almost every August now, and when we arrived at our new house, there was a dusting of ash on the porch.
Living Restlessly Inside a Father's Love
by Johanna Stoberock
One of the great gifts of the past five years is a book I was given by someone I think of as my reading mentor. I feel unbelievably fortunate to have a mentor in this regard. He’s been recommending books to me since I was fifteen, and still, in middle age, there is no one I would rather turn to when asking what to read next than him. The book? The Essays of Leonard Michaels.