Reading challenges and read-a-thons for Fall
Category: Reading
What I am Reading in March (and it’s not what I thought)!
Two things happened over the last week that completely derailed my carefully planned out reading life for the next several months: I wrote up my review of L. M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, and had to admit the pull of images and text from my reading of The War of the Worlds has not and …
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A Separate Peace, John Knowles (1959)
My Edition: Title: A Separate Peace Author: John Knowles Publisher: Bantam Books Year: 1975, text of the original 1959 edition Pages: 196 Synopsis: Goodreads Finney never left anything alone, not when it was well enough, not when it was perfect. “Let’s go jump in the river,” he said under his breath as we went …
How the Morning Pages Work for Me
I have been doing the Morning Pages from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way for many years. I am not a regular, but I go through spurts where I write every morning for many weeks. Recently, as the year was ending and a new one beginning, all that desire to let go of stagnation and the …
“Thanksgiving” from Ceremonials of Common Days, by Abbie Graham (1923)
My Edition: Title: Ceremonials of Common Days Author: Abbie Graham Publisher: The Womans Press Year: 1923 Pages: 97 On Thanksgiving Day I celebrate the Ceremonial of Being Glad for People. I could be grateful on this day for bountiful harvests and national benefits; but I have other days for those ceremonials because one heart …
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Who Left the Sun Inside this Book?
Have you ever found something extraordinary or intriguing tucked inside the pages of a book? I have found grocery lists for elaborate meals and medical appointment cards forgotten as bookmarks in the public library. In the university library I have come across notes taken for classes or lists of books for term papers, which always …
My Past in Books
I ride public transportation regularly. During my time in Seattle and Chicago and back here in Southern California, I spent countless hours reading in buses, trains and planes and while waiting for them. I sometimes reconstruct my life by what I was reading when. For example, thoughts of the New Yorker magazine take me to …
Putnam’s Minute-a-Day English for Busy People, Edwin Hamlin Carr (1921)
Or “Let me give a Resume of the Subject” [i] My public library is one of my favorite places to buy used books. In a large area of the lobby, there are rows and rows of books spanning all categories. My favorite is the one they call ‘vintage.’ Mostly acquired from estate sales these are …
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Reading Children’s Classics as an Adult
I think an angel walks over the world after the sun sets . . . a great, tall, white angel, with silvery folded wings . . . and sings the flowers and birds to sleep. Children can hear them if they know how to listen. Peter Irving, 10 years old. Anne of Avonlea During the …
Old Books….
I’ll let you define “old book” for yourself. For me, it is anything before the 1950s. I am not sure why I am drawn to old books, although I do have a historical sensibility about things in general. When I am interested in something I go back to the source, the foundation, the original. I …
Relevant Obscurity 