Riffs: Portia Levasseur

Portia Levasseur

Director of Development, LSU Press

on reading about reading

My guilty pleasure is reading historical fiction, like the work of Ken Follett and Philippa Gregory. I’m also a bit of a bibliophile and tend to do a lot of reading about books themselves. This spring I was engrossed with Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading. There’s something very special and personal about books, and I enjoyed Manguel’s articulation of the many ways that books touch our lives. Although his book has quite a scholastic title, it is actually told very much like a story. I believe that an able writer, as an enthusiastic teacher, can transform any topic in this way. Manguel makes reading as smooth and effortless as slicing a knife through butter.

My last read was actually a book of short stories: Crash and Tell by Lori Baker. I was struck by how genuine Baker’s characters seem. In the title story, the truthfulness of Virginia’s flaws were so tragic that I actually suffered with her and resented Lenny for her. Baker’s writing drew me in steadily, building pace so that, despite obvious pauses between each story, I could not bring myself to break. She explores a darker side of life that I believe to be most truthful, since suffering shapes us in ways that happiness cannot. Although the adjective is diminished by overuse, I admit I found Baker’s stories quite riveting.