tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27398219948430121532024-03-08T11:32:06.536-06:00Nashvegas ReadsA journal of reading habitsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-69275145914808886072013-09-29T10:40:00.002-05:002013-09-29T10:48:45.990-05:00An interesting question to considerIn today's New York Times Sunday Book Review, Mohsin Hamid (a new favorite writer of mine) and Zoe Heller tackle the question: "Are we too concerned that characters be likeable?" Here
is the link to the article, but I'll give you a snippet (okay, more
than a snippet - see italics below) of Hamid's answer. In some ways his
response answers a question I've been pondering the last six months: WhyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-28430318037611713742013-02-22T20:52:00.002-06:002013-02-22T20:53:17.714-06:00A Good Chuckle"In Villages God Does Not Live in Corners" by Joseph Brodsky
In villages God does not live in corners
as skeptics think. He's everywhere.
He blesses the roof, he blesses the dishes,
he holds his half of the double doors.
He's plentiful. In the iron pot there.
Cooking lentils on Saturday.
He sleepily jigs and bops in the fire,
he winks at me, his witness. He
assembles a fence, he marries some Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-55824083207867401012012-10-27T11:08:00.000-05:002012-10-27T11:08:05.661-05:00The books that saved our lives
I shared this snippet of a WSJ article with my students last week and asked them to name the three books that saved their lives. I'm not averse to Kindles, and someday I'll probably cave and buy one, but I have to agree with Joe Queenan here that it is hard to perfect the book. For the entire article titled "My 6,128 Favorite Books," click here.
"I wish I still had the actual copies Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-34083644966617958512012-09-01T14:27:00.000-05:002012-09-01T14:27:27.917-05:00Edith WhartonHow is it that reading her novel The Age of Innocence never gets old for me? I joked with my students recently about the fact that I am spending a little bit of every summer with Wharton, but I don't mind it. Especially on a day like today when, while grading a student essay, I came across this quote from her autobiography:
"One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-60330015750423365552012-07-22T11:23:00.001-05:002012-07-22T11:23:26.049-05:00"Every memorable class is a bit like a jazz composition"Today's New York Times Op-Ed, "The Trouble with Online Learning"
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-6775590124971777292012-06-12T22:22:00.001-05:002012-06-12T22:22:34.981-05:00All the King's MenI need to capture a few things while reading this enormous tome for next fall. Such as the following:
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"She trusted me, but perhaps for that moment of hesitation I did not trust myself, and looking back upon the past as something precious about to be snatched away from us and was afraid of the future. I had not understood then what I thinkUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-45865079855831171402012-05-21T07:56:00.000-05:002012-05-21T07:56:51.979-05:00"Confessions of a Nature Lover"Back then I was going steady
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with fog, who could dance
like no one's business, I threw her over
for a leaf that one day fluttered
first her shadow then her whole life
into my hand, that's a lot
of responsibility and a lot
of relatives, this leaf
and that leaf and all the other leaves
hung around, I told her
I needed space, which was true,
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-28388075180147061372012-05-15T14:15:00.002-05:002012-05-15T14:15:44.027-05:00Check it: new literary blog @ The New Yorkerhttp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/introducing-page-turner.html
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This is a quote from Roger Angell that I want to remember about what makes good writing (akin to taking the top of my head off):
In the mid-nineties, Roger Angell wrote an essay called “Storyville” about how the fiction department selects stories for inclusion in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-52090883370542251652012-05-06T08:37:00.000-05:002012-05-06T08:45:27.022-05:00The Weird SistersI just finished Eleanor Brown's new novel The Weird Sisters,and now I'm alternating between trying to decide how many copies to mail out to friends and stewing over what to read next. Whatever follows, it had better be this good. I actually savored The Weird Sisters, lingering over it before leaving for work in the mornings. I even waited a few days before finishing the last chapter because I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-61653126898081569232012-04-21T11:19:00.000-05:002012-04-21T11:20:17.403-05:00"Teach the Books, Touch the Heart"You know it is going to be a good New York Times article when it begins with the lines: "FRANZ KAFKA wrote that “a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.” I once shared this quotation with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation."
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-60684626337662675242012-04-17T22:36:00.000-05:002012-04-17T22:36:39.744-05:00And the winner isn't...Ann Patchett's NYTimes response to the lack of a Pulitzer Prize winner for literature this year. And yes, it should have been Jeffrey Eugenides for The Marriage Plot:
Let me underscore the obvious here: Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyondUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-25696897837256081932011-10-23T12:44:00.000-05:002011-10-23T12:44:51.047-05:00LettersI just finished putting the final touches on the last of my college recommendations for the year. There is only one phrase that does this particular task justice:
Blood, sweat, and tears.
As difficult as it can be to capture the essence of a student in a letter, I absolutely love doing it. I love celebrating these girls: their talents, their achievements, their individual styles. The fact thatUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-88794719770129589952011-09-11T14:05:00.000-05:002011-09-11T14:05:18.281-05:00The Names by Billy CollinsYesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-42347462499358516942011-08-24T08:15:00.000-05:002011-08-24T08:15:40.379-05:00"Winter in the Summer House" by Robert WatsonHome is a place we never notice
Needing much repair, and coming back
Year after year, the separated man
Filled the cracks in the hardwood floors with his own dust.
The house no longer creaked, or he no longer heard it;
The walls were painted but not covered;
Tiles of flint lay crossward on the lawn;
The trees were a silent siege; the heat went on.
As if he were custodian, he kept his toolsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-86453731964111153712011-08-04T22:41:00.000-05:002011-08-04T22:41:57.183-05:00Loving SummerTomorrow may officially be my last day of real summer, but I have had the summer to beat all summers, and I'm content to wave it a fond farewell. It was a summer full of love - literary and otherwise - and I'm still pinching myself at the wonder of it. I visited dear friends in New York, Denver, and Michigan; I was swept away by the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee; I became a godmother Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-27342240026267021642011-07-23T15:13:00.000-05:002011-07-23T15:13:08.818-05:00The HeadmasterAm in the middle of John McPhee's The Headmaster right now and feel compelled to include a snippet. While Frank Boyden was headmaster at Deerfield he apparently wrote thirty-five or so letters a day to everyone from alums to the oil man. Here is one such note, written April 30, 1930:
My dear Mr. Stephenson:
Your letter of April 22nd was received. Please renew the Full Coverage Insurance on my Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-66466273155951089052011-07-22T09:00:00.000-05:002011-07-22T09:00:45.695-05:00State of Wonder
Just finished Ann Patchett's new novel, State of Wonder, a title which describes exactly how I felt after reading it. Brilliant. That is the word that comes to mind when I think about how carefully she constructed her narrative, down to the very last sentence. Honestly - and I mean this as the highest compliment - it reminded me of the kind of critical writing we were all trying to do in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-58658179228069695952011-07-01T08:23:00.000-05:002011-07-01T08:23:56.383-05:00The Dirty LifeThis has been a theme of my summer and also some of the other books I've been reading lately.
After day 1 of my AT hike, I reveled in my grime-covered self. "I LIKE being dirty!" I exclaimed. The feeling of being covered in dirt and sweat with nothing to be done about it was wildly freeing to me. My hiking partner was not nearly so enthusiastic. While he took pains to clean up after each day's Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-57129424429300084712011-06-30T10:43:00.000-05:002011-06-30T10:43:52.296-05:00Commitment issues
I've been thinking about this blog, its purpose, and all the slacking I've been doing. I've read so many great books lately and when asked about them I can only utter a mild, "duh..." I'm sure I'm really instilling confidence in folks who know I've spent the past year teaching AP English. What can I say? My brain is on summer break.
In June I hiked a portion of the Appalachian Trail, which wasUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-25687127830545289772011-03-22T19:09:00.000-05:002011-03-22T19:09:33.698-05:00I don't have time to write thisToo bad, writing it anyway. It's been a remarkable morning.
After spending all night mulling over how to wrap up Gatsby with my seniors, I was still coming up short. Somehow I managed a few anxiety-fueled hours of sleep. I dreamed that I tried to teach "The Waste Land" in the morning instead and utterly failed at it. My attempt at winging it lead me to search for my notes the entire class. When Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-10015351715080160632011-03-20T15:36:00.000-05:002011-03-20T15:36:47.119-05:00here I amI thought I had better acknowledge the silence that has been this blog of late. I have been wondering a little about my lack of energy/desire to write because its not that I haven't read great things (check out Patti Smith's luminous prose in Just Kids). Its not that I haven't had interesting moments in the classroom this fall and spring (the students' modern-day Macbeth newscast; dancing with myUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-33862585601455287672011-02-16T10:33:00.000-06:002011-02-16T10:33:39.683-06:00macbethThis work never fails to move me. Today, it is these lines:
Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.
Macbeth: Cure her of that.
Cans't thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-89572124386200204252011-02-10T11:16:00.000-06:002011-02-10T11:16:24.133-06:00Reading LatelyHere's the roll call for January, all of which I'd recommend:
First, pair the novels Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez and Property by Valerie Martin for a chilling look at slavery from two very different female perspectives. Eerily, these novels could be twins of each other.
On a lighter note (er, not really), throw in some Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This I read with 30 adorable Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-65925966687834517872011-01-10T13:18:00.001-06:002011-02-10T10:39:00.706-06:00An Object of BeautySteve Martin's new novel about New York's art world in the 1990s:
decidedly awesome.
Nothing quite like good reading on a snow day in Nashville.
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2739821994843012153.post-76992683415459067172010-12-21T11:29:00.002-06:002010-12-21T11:35:07.451-06:00mea culpaFeeling the need to report on my lovely visit to Borders last night after bashing the the thought of it in my previous post. I found a parking spot immediately. I saw a million books that I wanted to read. The store is really well-lighted, even - dare I say - cozy. They have a much better selection of Audio Books. I also ran into a friend who didn't seem to have nearly the hang up that I did. AndUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1