My Own Thoughts

Category: Books and Reading

  • Quote

    The lost take the path of least resistance. –possibly a Choctaw saying

  • New Authors for me

    Saturday or Sunday we went to the library and I checked out 17 books. Note: if you are a military wife, these are probably not good books to read. Bring Him Home by Karina Bliss was a beautifully told tale about a woman whose husband was killed as the result of an IED and her…

  • Too Nice

    For a class I am teaching for the first time this semester, I think I have tried to be too nice. The students are pushing and pushing and I finally had to step back and say, “No. You can’t do that.” I assigned two books. The total cost for those books is $14 plus tax.…

  • Bookstore in Fayetteville

    Buzzfeed has an article 17 Bookstores that Will Literally Change Your Life. One is in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dickson Street Bookshop Specializing in out of print and rare books, you’ll step off the main Fayetteville drag into this cozy shop filled with rows and rows of books old and new. The rare and more leather-bound options…

  • Books Nearby

    This past Saturday Ron would talk about a book for a while and then I would ask about another book. This happened twice. Both times it turns out that the book I asked about is next to the one he was talking about in our bookshelves. I guess I have finally organized our library in…

  • Connections

    When I first came to my new position, I was asked for a six-word autobiography. My teaching blog is down, but it had to do with coincidence being God’s working in my life. It was beautiful and succinct. This will be far more rambling, but it also is a weaving of God in my life.…

  • Reading Leechcraft

    I finally pulled out the Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft book and started looking at it some more. I was working on writing poetry and I actually ended up with a poem about the visual rhetoric of the book as it is looked at from the outside and first few pages. I discovered that it was published by…

  • Loving the Scottish Poem

    It is so calling out to me to write something similar–even though my hand is not weary with writing. My hand is weary with writing; my sharp great point is not thick; my slender-beaked pen juts forth a beetle-hued draught of bright blue ink. A steady stream of wisdom springs from my well-coloured neat fair…

  • Reading

    I found a book by Kate Danley on my iPad Kindle. Apparently I read a short story collection she wrote in and enjoyed it enough to purchase the book. However, I also apparently hadn’t had time to read it. Or I forgot to read it. Or something. However, today I found it. I read it.…

  • Reading About Beowulf

    I read some of a book’s introduction to Beowulf to my son and he said “It’s a post-modernist reading” but when I explained to him that it was written in 1837, he said it was just crap. Hmm. What does that say about post-modernist readings in his viewpoint. I think it’s just crap, but I…

  • Carrie Vaughn

    Do not read this again. I bought Kitty and the Midnight Hour in hardback and epub. What an idiot. I should have known why it looked familiar. She gets raped by her werewolf boss. There’s nothing in the book discussions that mentioned that. I am not reading this author again.

  • Dielli Sunday

    Went to a different church to visit this weekend and a young girl came on stage and spoke. She told the Dielli story from the Bible perspective, with “young” being 13 or so. That’s a lot younger than I had envisioned. It was so well done. Then the preacher got up and spoke on the…

  • Word Length

    I wrote Dielli I and it was 140,000 words. I rewrote it significantly and shortened it to 114,000 words. Today I am reading Mike Nappa’s 77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected and in “Reason No. 11” it says: Typical adult nonfiction book: 45,000-55,000 words Typical adult novel: 80,000-100,000 words Typical young adult novel: 40,000-60,000…

  • Dielli Revisions

    Using Robert’s Rules of Writing: Start the book with Dielli crawling out of the bedroom to find her aunt and uncle, not with the dream. (Really?) “Figure out what the action is … and then start writing just a fraction before that action begins.” Maybe reorder, so that it starts with Dielli killing the spider?…

  • I was insufficiently English-nerdy as a mother.

    Poetry, the First Milk has a mother who quoted poetry to her children all their lives. When at age 4 my daughter Anna became increasingly anxious at bedtime, I tried coaxing her to sleep with the most melodious poems I knew. “Come live with me and be my love,” I began as I sat on…

  • Sci Fi/Fantasy Books

    We officially have too many science fiction and fantasy books. I can’t fit them all into the three bookshelves in the dining room without double stacking and I don’t really like to do that. I know Chris does it, but I don’t like it. When I go in to find something to read, I have…

  • Oh no.

    My list of RSS feeds I read on a regular basis is gone as my computer crashed. So what am I going to do? It will be hard to reconstruct that list. I have significant lists that I read to keep myself up on various streams of interest. Update: Hurray! It’s so wonderful to have…

  • Commonplace Quote

    Inuit Tradition: To truly love someone is to learn the song that is in their heart, And then sing it to them when they forget

  • Oops.

    I found the edition of my book with the mistakes all marked. That version did NOT make it to the printer. So I have errors in my book. Errors I had already found. But somehow I lost the copy that those were noted on. Maybe I won’t read my own book so I won’t see…

  • Vegetable Pills

    Discovery News has some information about medical practices of 2000 years ago. It turns out that ships carried vegetable pills with them. Advanced DNA analysis of 2,000-year-old tablets has revealed that vegetable pills may have been part of an ancient travel medical kit, according to a new study. The kit was recovered from a shipwreck…