Today I’m thrilled to be publishing my review of Every Day I Write the Book by scholar and creative writer Amitava Kumar. Everyday I Write the Book is a text about academic writing for academic writers, which isn’t to say you need to be an academic writer to read the book. Since Kumar is an academic and creative writer this book really speaks to both audiences, with an emphasis on the academic audience. Speaking from experience, I’ve used countless books written by creative writers to improve my writing, and I think the reverse works as well, so without further ado, here is why I find this book to be such a valuable resource as a writer and as a scholar.

Like many people I’ve been using COVID travel restrictions as a reason to travel by reading. In the evenings, or on those long Saturdays/Sundays, made even more luxurious and easy to escape by rainy weather, I curl up in my big, soft, reading chair and tackle the mammoth Japanese classic Genji Monogatari or The Tale of Genji by the lady Murasaki Shikibu. As I read I enjoy a long and fragrant cup of tiguanyin or perhaps a steaming brew of genmaicha, a wonderfully savory Japanese green tea with toasted brown rice. In preparation for this small, nightly pleasure, I’ve gathered a notebook and one of my favorite fountain pens (really an array of fountain pens and ink as I write down so many gorgeous quotes about calligraphy).

He prepared the letter with exquisite care, writing on light brown Korean paper.”

“The note was written on Michinokuni paper, which lent it an old-fashioned aura, but Genji was a little surprised, shocked even, at the seductive allure of the calligraphy, which was embellished with refined flourishes.”

Step into my library, pull up a chair, and I’ll pour you a cup of tea while we talk my book selection for September: The Tale of Genji. He prepared the letter with exquisite care, writing on light brown Korean paper.”

“The note was written on Michinokuni paper, which lent it an old-fashioned aura, but Genji was a little surprised, shocked even, at the seductive allure of the calligraphy, which was embellished with refined flourishes.”

Step into my library, pull up a chair, and I’ll pour you a cup of tea while we talk my book selection for September: The Tale of Genji.

As an academic there are very few things that are as exciting as August and September: the start of a fresh, new academic year. It is an opportunity to start anew, to hit the reset on how we approach the year. This year we’re dealing with an unprecedented and new learning environment with many of us confronting hybrid or completely virtual (which means your material space is probably home ) learning, meaning we have to be even more self-driven. So, today I’m going to take you inside of the planning strategy that turned me from a B to an A student AND carried me through my Ph.D. with plenty of honors and distinctions along the way. Whether you’re just starting high school or entering your final year of college, let’s talk about some planning steps that can help get you on track, starting with some tools.

Welcome back to the Maison Metropolitanist Library, a cosy digital reading space where I imagine you joining me on a rainy evening, to discuss books research, study methods, writing, and the intellectual life. Today I imagine we’re sitting across the desk from each other, a fresh stack of books between us because I’m going to be going over some of the books I’ve ordered in 2020 (not all of them, this will be a growing series of book hauls so this is just my first order of books for 2020).

As some of you are probably already aware, last Wednesday Kim and I released our writing episode of Salon Evocations, an episode that we recorded in the salon pre-Covid many months ago, and while it is difficult to imagine how my writing process has changed in less than a year, all of this solitude during quarantine has given me plenty of time to reflect on my writing process and today I wanted to write a little bit about some of the things I have learned about myself as a writer that I would include if I were recording this episode today.

Welcome back to my library! I’ve been on a hiatus for any number of reasons, but July marks the beginning of my bullet journaling year and as I was setting up my bullet journal I thought, what better way to re-open the Maison library than through a step by step of how I set up my bullet journal. There are many people who are more experienced with bullet journaling, and I draw my own inspiration from many different bullet journaling accounts on Instagram, but what I can offer you today is how and why I set up my journal the way I do from the perspective of an independent scholar who has used the bullet journaling system for a few years.

Welcome back into my library. Please, take a seat, I recommend that comfy one by the window because today I have quite a stack of resources for you on a subject central to my research that I hope will be helpful in yours. Help yourself to your favorite beverage and let’s talk Decolonialism, Decolonial Studies, and Decolonial Theory.

For me writing at its best is a tangible, material, sensuous experience. On the best of days my fountain pen, fully inked in pale, petal purple sailor yozakura or deep earthy J. Herbin poussiere de lune, touches the thin, delicate looseleaf of Tomoe River and away I drift into scholarship and analysis. Perhaps there is a stack of books, a stack of notes, but the best is when my desk is clear.

Join me as I walk down memory lane here in my library by going through the texts from my Comparative Literature course the 20th Century Novel. A globetrotting adventure awaits…

During the week following Madame d’Exelman’s suicide, Lachaille’s reactions were somewhat incoherent. He engaged the stars of the National Musical Academy to dance at a midnight fête held at his own house, and, wishing to give a supper party at the Pré-Catalan, he arranged for that restaurant to open a fortnight earlier than was their custom.”

Hear ye, Hear ye!

Oh, excuse me, I think I reached back into the wrong century for my invitation.

Dear Metropolitanists,

You are formally invited to join Dr. Kim Coates of Evocations Review and myself every Tuesday at 6 pm EST for our weekly salon on Instagram Live. Here you will be able to find a list of dates and topics. So, put on your most stylish outfit, bring your most elevated conversation, grab a glass of champagne at the door, and make yourself at home.

I like to imagine my reader sitting enthusiastically across from me, a substantial wooden desk residing between us. Perhaps I’m pushing a stack of weatherbeaten, battle worn texts toward you, or perhaps you have your own pristine stack of newly purchased paperbacks, all fresh white pages, full of words but blank in terms of notation.

In the days since self-quarantine and social distancing began I have received some questions regarding how to effectively work from home and create your own schedule. Many of us who are either finished with graduate school or in the later stages often joke that we have “trained my whole life for this,” which is true, learning how to manage our projects and organize our own schedules is one of the key skills that anyone who completes their Ph.D. has ample experience in, but one thing I realize as I engage with people in online communities is that there also many graduate students just beginning their journey. At the beginning of graduate school the Ph.D. or M.A. is much more structured, and it makes sense that self-quarantining (amongst its many challenges) also means tackling early the challenges of time management. So, this one is for you, and I hope other people who have “trained for this” will create their own resources or jump in and give suggestions in the comments as well. Personally, I like working from home, but I want to acknowledge there are many people who are more productive at libraries, cafés, campus offices, and basically any space that is NOT the personal space of the home, and I respect that. I think now might be a good time to check in with yourself, as we begin to try to establish how to plan, and consider whether you flourish working from home or if you are someone who needs the social space of an external workspace to work most productively. Recognizing the ways in which working from home is either going to aid or challenge you is important starting out because perhaps most important to organizing our own schedules and managing our projects is knowing ourselves and negotiating with ourselves.

There has been a change in plans. I was going to write about NeMLA today, but it seems that entry into my library will be shelved for another week as, there is something too incongruous about writing about an academic gathering as I sit in my library, self-quarantined. Many of us find ourselves at home, something I am quite used to as a humanist. Much of my Ph.D. was spent on a research fellowship and I have learned how to productively fill the hours when the only driving force behind my work is myself, but perhaps, unlike me, you are an active person who feels limited and confined by four walls, someone who enjoys long walks whether through the city or in nature. So, today I thought I would pick up a different entry, one requested by Instagrammer @Professorjacques, who recently inquired about a comparative literature reading list, a request I find myself quite thrilled with the prospect of.

“Power, greatness, authority, these were fitting and proper for men; but there were sweeter, more beautiful gifts for women, and power of a certain kind too. Such power she would like to exert in this glittering new world, so full of mysteries and promise. If she could afford it she would have a salon, a drawing-room where men and women, not necessarily great, but real, alive, free, and untrammeled in manner and thought, should come and pour themselves out to her sympathy and magnetism.” Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset.

Written by Harlem Renaissance figure Jessie Redmon Fauset (Fauset played so many roles in the Harlem Renaissance it is difficult to confine her to only one). Fauset was an editor of The Crisis magazine, mentor to Langston Hughes and the first editor to accept and publish a poem by him, a translator of Francophone literature (usually by authors of African descent), and well-known salonniere (meaning she opened her salon/home up to further cultivate the artistic culture of the movement)

It is a quiet night here in the library of the maison, silent, even. This type of silence has two options: it can be filled with melancholy or dreams and tonight I want to dream of stacks of books piling high toward the ceiling and notes scattered across every surface. Perhaps it is the beginning of a new semester or perhaps you are joining me in the library not because school compels you but because you have found in your life that time, that empty space ready to be filled and even enriched through reading for pleasure.

“To come to the Opera in a Brown coupé was almost as honorable a way of arriving as in one’s own carriage.” (The Age of Innocence, 4). Imagine a New York without cars, the noise reduced to human chatter, the sound of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels. It is the evening and the opera is just letting out. The carriages form a line outside of the Academy of Music, an old venue that only has around 30 private boxes dominated by old New York families who can trace their ancestry back to Dutch and British settlers. Soon the Gilded-Age Elite, industrial tycoons who cannot force their way into the insular old theater will build a new Opera house, this time with enough private boxes to completely reshape New York’s elite society. T

Have you ever had this happen? The conditions are perfect. The day yawns and stretches out before you open, exactly the type of day you have waited for in order to begin writing. Perhaps it’s raining outside and there’s no temptation to brave the bad weather, so, instead, you sit down at your perfectly empty desk, which I imagine is a nice, modern airy but substantial walnut desk, completely cleared of clutter, perfectly reflecting both the openness of the day and the openness of your mind to spending the day writing. On the desk is a stack of clean, empty paper, perhaps lined, perhaps gridded, perhaps perfectly blank, you decide, and at the center of the desk sits one fresh sheet and a perfectly full fountain pen in some dignified color, let’s say a nice a nice burgundy or perhaps a deep forest green. You gather your books or whatever you need, flick on a lovely art nouveau, glass desk lamp, and now…