After yesterday’s post, I think that, in the interest of Honesty, I should tell you, O Reader, that I do not faithfully read the books stacked at my bedside. While almost all of them are books in the process of being read by me, I don’t want you to think that I am some sort […]
Read moreCurrently, right now, in two neat stacks of seven each (which only Just So Happens to be the case; I didn’t realize, until I counted, that I had seven in each pile), Fourteen Books in the process of being read. By me. Except for one, which I finished last summer. A Community of Character: Toward […]
Read moreI received a belated and Most Welcome birthday gift the other day: Annie Dillard’s novel, The Maytrees. I am thrilled to get my hands on anything by Annie Dillard. Anything. Already I own copies of The Writing Life and An American Childhood, and I own them again in my Three By Annie Dillard, which includes […]
Read moreThis past week I found myself revisiting one of my favorite books, Frederick Buechner’s Godric. I’ve read it twice already, and was not disappointed to realize recently that Now would be an excellent time to use the book as an illustration in my classroom. My students and I are smack in the middle of the […]
Read morePurchased yesterday afternoon with a Barnes and Noble gift card from a student received Idon’trememberwhen. I haven’t time to read it of course and of course I’ve read it before. But I opened it last night before closing my eyes and treated myself to just a few pages (just a few), waiting to hear Big […]
Read moreI’ve just finished reading this book, The Sea, by John Banville. I didn’t read it for a class, or a book club. I read it for myself, a rare achievement for me these days. I’d never heard of it before. But when my friend Jennie-Rebecca was visiting last spring, and she and her husband and […]
Read moreWe were guests tonight at a dinner party/birthday party/commune meeting (don’t ask) for a friend who had the audacity to turn 30 (thirty! Who are these people, born after 1977???) this week. It was great fun, and the conversation rich– if not occasionally interrupted by one of the many (we have nine between us) children […]
Read moreWho Lately Lives In China but Is Home in America For Just a Little While. We joined with other pilgrims on the journey home. They came from London town, and how it warmed the heart to hear our native tongue again! An onion is an onion still no matter what you call it. A man’s […]
Read moreI think we ought to read only the kinds of book that wound and stab us….We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the […]
Read moreI’ve just finished reading The Tale of Despereaux to my children for the second time. We read it first in 2005, so I thought we could stand revisiting it. It’s a sweet story– a fairy tale story of a princess and a dungeon. The hero is a mouse (Despereaux), and the bad guys are some […]
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