Saturday, August 16, 2025
Four short book reviews
Friday, August 15, 2025
Encouragement for my daughter: TEACHING WITH FIRE
"The people I love the bestjump into work head firstwithout daillying in the shallows..."I love people who harness themselves, like an ox to a heavy cart,who pull like a water buffalo, with massive patience,who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,who do what has to be done, again and again" (5).
"Use me as Thou wilt to save Thy Children today and tomorrow, and to build a nation and a world to where no child is left behind, and every child is loved and every child is safe" (21).
"On the other side of the doorI can be a different me,As smart and as brave and as funny or strongAs a person could want to be" (37).
"It seems only yesterday I used to believe that there was nothing under my skin but light" (55).
"You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting" (75).
In education today teachers are asked to do so much. Sometimes it feels like there isn't even time to breathe. In her essay, middle school science teacher Maggie Anderson talks about how the poem "Fire" speaks to her about the need for space in the day. When building a fire it is important to have space between the logs, breathing space. If logs are packed too tight, the flames may go out. Reflecting on teacher burnout Maggie said, "After much soul-searching, I realized I was piling on too many logs too tightly and the flame inside me was beginning to wane -- even smolder at times. I was desperate for some space. Children need space as well ..." (88) We all do. We need space and time to help us process and learn.
"Children, if you dare to thinkOf the greatness, rareness, muchnessFewness of this precious onlyEndless world in which you sayYou live, you think of things like this..." (149)
"The greatest giftI can giveisto see, hear, understand,and to touch another person" (133).
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Review: WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR EYE (+Friday56 LinkUp)
Wapakoneta, Ohio / The Armstrong Air and Space Museum
Virgil Augustine's cell phone rang just as he was searching for his coat to go home.
New York City, New York / Columbia University
Dayton Bailey was learning that timing was everything.
RULES:
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enterMonday, August 11, 2025
TTT: Help getting out of a reading slump
Can't find anything that interests you? Try a shorter commitment, selecting a short novel or a few short stories. Here are a few I like:
- Selecting a novella for an upcoming car trip with the family, a book title we can all agree on.
- I just finished a book from the NYT Best books list: Say Nothing. It is 19th on the list. So good.
- Making selections for books to help me complete the genre challenge at StoryGraph. I only have ten genres to go out of 58.
- And, right now, I am reading a book recommended by the librarians on their "We Recommend" shelf: When the Moon Hits Your Eye.
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Sunday Salon -- Busy Summer 2025
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Sunset in Central Oregon. |
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Kathy is 21, I mean, 70! |
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Cousins with photo-bombers |
- Recently completed books:
- Briar Club by Kate Quinn. I finished this book club selection one day before the meeting, which was one day before we left on our latest trip. Quinn is such a good writer and this one featured a mystery set during the McCarthy era in Washington, D.C. Print and Audio. 4 stars.
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. What a depressing classic. It was almost torture to read, it made me so angry/sad. Print. 3.5 stars.
- Say Nothing: Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe. Another book club choice. This narrative nonfiction book is about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the after effects. Don and I listened to the audiobook together and both rated it with 5 stars.
- Poems for Tortured Souls edited by Liz Ison. Categories of poems, many by very famous people I don't think of as poets, like Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. 4 stars.
- Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson. The Pulitzer Prize winner in 1934 about the Great Depression and the beginning of the Dust Bowl. A classic. 4 stars.
- The Road Home by Rex Ogle. A 2025 Printz Honor book. Rex is a gay man who became homeless when he came out to his father. His story is so heartbreaking but ends up being redemptive. This is the third book I've read about Rex's unhappy childhood. I hope he is done with the unhappy parts of his story. 4 stars, audiobook.
- Currently reading:
- The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. A book club selection. I have both the audiobook and the print edition so I should begin to make faster progress. 27% complete.
- Grimms' Fairy Tales. My current 12-pages-day classic book. 31% complete.
- When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi. I got a late start on this book so I'm worried I won't be able to finish it before the library calls it home. So far quite funny. 26% complete.
- Project reading. I read these books to help me fulfill a StoryGraph Challenge to read at least one book per their 58 subjects/genres. I'm making progress, hitting 48 down this week after these additions:
- North American Maps for Curious Minds by Matthew Bucklin. Reference. Technology.
- Bring the Magic Home: An Exploration of Designs Inspired by Disney by Sunny Chanel. Design.
- Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach by Sam Intrator. Education.
- Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. True Crime.
- The Changeling. Vol 1. by Tina Lugo. Manga
- The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded by Jim Ottaviani. Math. Computers.
- A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. Religion.
- Today I placed holds at the library for a few books which should help me check off the middle grade and video games categories with one book. I also checked out a Shirley Jackson classic novella so I can check off the horror category.
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Queen Anne's Lace. For some reason, hmm, I've always liked this weedy flower. |
- TTT: Books with Honorifics in the Title
- Paris in July: Food, music, reviews, and more
- Review: How to Read a Book
- Paris in July, Part Two
- Classic Review: Catch-22 -- Where I Examine Why This Book is Considered so Influential
- TTT: The Last Ten Books I've Read Set During a War
- Review: The Briar Club
- TTT: A Twist on Beach Reads
- Review: The Hearing Test
- TTT: Historical fiction
- Nonfiction Review: Say Nothing: Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
- Classic Review: Tess of the D'Urbervilles
- Whew! That's a lot. I haven't posted a Sunday Salon since July 12th, almost a month.
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Some woodpecker has been very busy on this tree beside the McKenzie River! |
Saturday, August 9, 2025
Classic Review: TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is the biggest downer of all novels. How did this book ever make it as a classic anyone wanted to read?
[Tess of the D'urbervilles is] about a girl who gets raped and impregnated by her fake cousin, buries her illegitimate baby semi-illegally, gets spurned by her new husband because she tells him she was raped (nice dude, eh?), stabs the guy who raped her... and gets arrested at Stonehenge. Oh yeah, and then gets hanged (Shmoop)
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Nonfiction review: SAY NOTHING (+Discussion questions)
Jean McConville was thirty-eight when she disappeared, and she had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering from childbirth. She brought fourteen children to term and lost four of them, leaving her with ten kids who ranged from Anne, who was twenty, to Billy and Jim, the sweet-eyed twins, who were six.
Stories about the Price sisters began to circulate among British troops stationed in Belfast and to find their way into the accounts of visiting war correspondents. They developed an outsize reputation as deadly femmes fates who would venture into the mean streets of Belfast with an assault rifle hidden "down a bell-bottomed trouser leg."
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
- 20 Books of Summer: this is the 24th book I've read this summer so far.
- Big Book Summer Challenge: 540 pages, 412 pages of text.