Category: Summer Reading 2018

I heard Kate Bowler interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.  The interview moved me to buy Bowler’s book which chronicles her story centered on a diagnosis of Stage IV colon cancer.  With tremendous power and grace she takes the reader from the highpoint of her young life through the devastating diagnosis of cancer

Hi Everyone, I was told about the reading challenge by my friend, Nadia, and have posted before, but didn’t get very far in page count. So, on to the Summer Challenge! My family hosted a nine-day religious event from 6/30-7/8—an enormous undertaking—and I was able to read not more than a page a night last

In the wee dark hours sleeplessly far from dawn, my fifteen year old self was penetrated irrevocably by Like Water for Chocolate. My parents slept upstairs as I sat wearily tiptoeing into the teenage years of my ongoing insomnia. A midnight movie had ended, and I contemplated to lazily returning upstairs when the first scenes

This book, published in 1999, was Winterson’s first collection of stories—seventeen of them—written over the course of her career to-date. I wanted to read these stories because I had very recently read her story, “The 24-Hour Dog,” in an anthology. I’m a dog-lover, so you will probably think that this story is treacly when I

  I came across the book Mindset by Carol Dweck on one of my favorite websites, Brain Pickings by Maria Popova.  Dweck is a research psychologist who has done groundbreaking work on how our belief systems shape our personalities and our brains.  She describes two mindsets that can color the way we live our lives

Well, I know when I started prepping for this session I said I was aiming to avoid reading white male authors, but here I am reading The Cay for the first time– how didn’t I learn about this children’s book when I was young? I read so prolifically and so widely my entire childhood– I feel

I have to admit that I finished Aja Gabel’s magnificent debut novel, The Ensemble, last week, just three days after I’d started it. I would have finished it sooner, but I had to do some other things like eat and sleep and take the dog out for walks. If I could have figured out how

Kate always gives me good books to read. So far I can recall the RBG book, Oliver Sacks Gratitude and now this. There are probably more. Thanks K8 the GR8! I loved reading this book, which is a series of her blogs put into print. I very much identify with lots of ideas Ursula throws out–

  Susan Howe’s book, My Emily Dickinson, was my choice for Week 1, so that I would at last read it. It’s been on my bookshelf since ModPo 2015, my second season of ModPo. Suffice it to say that Howe’s Emily Dickinson has changed my Emily Dickinson. I had read a book about her life