After randomly picking up Heliopolis, I put library holds on books by each of the remaining featured Iceland Writers Retreat authors. Then I wandered over to the fiction section of the Ballard branch to browse the shelves, and there was Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders. Read More
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Book Report: A Year of Wonders
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Pursuing Excellence
As a government employee, succession planning is a common theme at my office; civil service is out of fashion, and we are what in HR circles is termed an “aging workforce.” What this means to me as the staff writer is that I spend a disconcerting amount of time writing death notices for our internal communications. I hate to say it, but we have boilerplate for this sort of thing. Read More
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Book Report: Heliopolis
In preparation for Iceland Writers Retreat, I am reading at least one book by each of the featured authors before I go. Although it’s a bit weird to review a book by someone who is about to become your teacher, I read best when I know I have to report on it later, so here we are. While I was reading Iain Reid’s The Truth About Luck, I took the girls to the Central Library for a children’s film festival. Afterwards, I browsed fiction, keeping an eye on my oldest daughter as she moved among the homeless in the manga section nearby. I found Heliopolis by James Scudamore first. Read More
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Book Report: The Truth About Luck
After I signed up for Iceland Writers Retreat, it occurred to me that I should probably be familiar with the writing of the featured authors who will be leading the workshops. That probably should have occurred to me before I committed, but if stories needn’t be linear, why should life be? At first I wasn’t going to blog about them, because if it’s awkward critiquing your friend’s book on the internet, how much worse would it be to criticize a future teacher? But I can’t read critically unless I know I’m going to have to type those thoughts later, so here goes. Read More
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New World Order – Family Dinner
Don’t know who did this but it’s awesome.
Found here: http://www.jungleredwriters.com/2011/11/it-aint-norman-rockwell.html
A few years ago, I read a couple of books about the importance of family dinner. This is a tad ironic, because I can barely scramble eggs, which is one of many facts that handicapped me as a stay-at-home mom. Nevertheless, I read The Cleaner Plate Club and The Family Dinner and dutifully took notes. The Cleaner Plate Club was a down-to-earth read that recognized parents’ limitations while pointing out statistical correlations between children’s health, academic success, and family meal times. The Family Dinner, with its poetry samples and conversations starters, was more high concept (Laurie David doesn’t cook her own meals either). It emphasized the importance of breaking bread together in building cohesion as a family unit. I lapped it up.