Image

Credit...Librado Romero/The New York Times

By Leah Greenblatt

Dear readers,

How’s your attention span these days? Mine seems to have surrendered almost completely to fidgety unrest, an anti-flow state you might call gerbil-esque (fuzzy, skittering, frequently stuck on a wheel).

Nobody wants to go full hamster. So it helps to have a day job that relies at least in part on getting lost in literature; the reliable lure of other voices, other rooms. But often lately I find myself reaching for great minds in small doses, concentrated pellets of wisdom and perspective that I can hold in one hand. And I have found myself especially soothed by the pithier works of two famously sharp women not known for suffering fools.

Which is not to say that the books in this week’s newsletter are devoid of whimsy or delight. Intermittently, there are dips into the strange and fantastical; sometimes even a recipe (for poison, but still). Both bring a welcome bite and astringency to their tone, a sort of bracing witch hazel for the soul.

—Leah

“Loot and Other Stories,”by Nadine Gordimer

Fiction, 2003