Why have a blog if you never write anything on it? Henceforth, my pre-New Year’s vow: more blogs. (Which sounds to me like more slogs through wintry swamps in leaden boots, but so be it.)

GREAT READING:

1. Yo, Ivanhoe! Perhaps the most original writing on the web, always changing, always unique, always, somehow, heart-cracking.  Check it out.  http://www.rakemag.com/blogs/yo-ivanhoe

2. Shall We Gather at the River, poems by James Wright.  Originally published in 1960, this is a beautiful, elegiac collection by one of my favorite poets.

3. Randall Jarrell’s Book of Stories, edited and with an introduction by Randall Jarrell. A small, lovely anthology, including work by Chekhov, Chuang T’zu, Dinesen, the Brothers Grimm and many others, this is absorbing reading. Take it one story at a time. Of this collection, Jarrell says, “Here, then, are thirty stories. Some of them are realistic, some fantastic; from the heights of some of the stories the abysses of others may seem infinitely removed. It is the reader who joins them.”

4. The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. I loved this novel.

GREAT YOU-TUBING

1. Check out this perfect high school prank: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gHT_ufv2iY8

2. A twisted Christmas tale: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RY6CbyW8grk

Enjoy!