I’ve grown leery of the essay anthology after the horrible experience I had reading Things I Would Have Learned in English 101 if I Hadn’t Skipped Class to Have Sex, I mean, Things I Learned from the Women Who Dumped Me. The book was so awful and cliched that I feared I had be scarred [...]
Have I mentioned lately that I’m in love with my Loft class this fall? Love. I can’t even remember the last time I had a class that I enjoyed this much. It might have been the class with The Grad and the Hottie, and I can’t even remember when that was. It was a long [...]
Have I told you about my brother-in-law Ben getting his masters degree in holistic healing arts or, as Sister #2 and I like to call it, quackery? (Once I mistakenly called it Voodoo and then had to sit through a 18-minute lecture about how Voodoo is a real and valid religion and I shouldn’t be [...]
Yesterday, I had a lot to say. Most of it revolved around domestic violence, breast cancer research, and the death of Sheila Wellstone. I may get around to say it sometime later, but it won’t be today. Today, I got nothing. Why? Because saying something would require to me to stop thinking about Dan Chaon’s [...]
Sometimes I could burst with all the things I need to say. And after trying to cram it all into one epic post, I’ve decided to sit back a bit, ruminate, and have a bowl of chicken noodle soup. While I ruminate, I will attempt to make some of you feel old (I’m thinking of [...]
“I will always play spikeyball,” Nolan said to Liam. “Oh look, look, it’s loading.” The Tibbles (at least Nolan and Liam) have figured out how to use Ziggy to get to the App Store, find the free Kids games, and download games. They are officially more tech savvy than 89% of all Americans.
If you read about graphic novels at all, it’s hard to escape the accolades being heaped upon David Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp. If you believe the hype this book is like the second-coming of Jesus here on Earth to show us the beauty and wonder of the graphic novel form. Really, they (reviewers & readers) are [...]
I’ve been trying to cope all weekend with my disappointment with “Where the Wild Things Are.” Mostly this has involved reading every single review of the movie I can find and hoping it will help me sort out my feelings about this beautiful movie. Visually the movie is stunning. Every single minute of it is [...]
There is a point in Frank Portman’s Andromeda Klein where Andromeda talks about surrounding herself with the books she loves and the energy they produce. As someone who is surrounded by books, I was struck by the thought. I love my books and display them prominently in my home. But the idea of the books [...]
I workshopped my ghost story again last night. The class was pretty evenly split on the whole second person vs. anything but second person and ghost vs. no ghost issue. I’m not sure what to make of that. But I do know my story and I’m keeping the second person and the ghost. For the [...]
She’s funny. Which wasn’t wholly unexpected because her stories are funny. But it was reassuring. She was so funny that my nephew Max, who is going to be 11 in a few weeks, laughed. A lot. And it wasn’t because she was talking about butts and/or farting. She loves Alice Munro. Really, really, really, really [...]
Okay, I’m still working on this theory, but it’s been bubbling inside of me ever since I picked up Frank Portman’s Andromeda Klein. The book clocks in at something like 430 pages (I’d go look but it is upstairs and I am downstairs). That’s a lot of pages, especially for a young adult novel. I [...]
My mom is still struggling with Facebook. She kind of grasps the concept but doesn’t quite realize that you can actively read your friends’ updates without responding or updating yourself. Tonight, at Jaycie & Max’s birthday party, she was telling us how she noticed that a woman she went to high school with had just [...]
Last night I dreamt I was at a party, or it might have been in class. It was a gathering of people of some sort. I can’t remember what we were talking about but during the conversation I said annunciation instead of enunciation. Twice! Then someone made fun of me for it. It was a [...]
MN Reads PW.net
