A Review of Mary Cappello’s Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack
Keywords
book review, dictionary, exploration
Abstract
All my life I have been a browser of dictionaries, a Sunday-afternoon flipper of phone books, a belly-on-the-carpet peruser of atlases and anthologies. I’ve been a geek for information since I picked up my first children’s illustrated encyclopedia. But I also love a good story, which is probably why I read essays. Who can resist the genre’s uncanny alchemy of information and personal narrative steeped in the mind of a thoughtful observer? Life is chaos, as information is chaos, but the essay reveals order, structure, and meaning in both. It’s the kind of literature that helps us find, rather than escape ourselves—the essay as atlas to the heart, dictionary of our own self-definition or, as Mary Cappello describes it in her new book, an almanac to mood.
Original Publication Citation
“A Review of Mary Cappello’s Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack.” Brevity Blog, January 2017. http://brevity.wordpress.com 3 ms. pages.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Franklin, Joey, "A Review of Mary Cappello’s Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack" (2017). Faculty Publications. 6729.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/6729
Document Type
Other
Publication Date
2017
Publisher
Brevity
Language
English
College
Humanities
Department
English
Copyright Use Information
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