Month: December 2013

We want to walk into the pages…the closer we get, the better.

fadiman croppedWhat kind of reader are you?  Anne Fadiman gives a book-length answer to that question in Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.  She tells stories  about her passion for reading books.  For example, she describes the thrill of going to a place that a book describes, then reading … Read More

Some time when the river is ice ask me what mistakes I have made.

stafford croppedThis is the first line from a well-loved poem by William Stafford. He often writes about things that appear to be calm, but aren’t.  I think his poems are like that, too.  At first glance, they don’t seem very challenging. But it’s a mistake to read quickly because you can … Read More

“Even then I sensed this . . . would be at the core of my imagination for the rest of my life.”

PamukcropThis novel is a collection of beautiful sentences about self-discovery.  For example: “It was during these days that I first began to feel fissures opening in my soul, wounds of the sort that plunge some men into a deep, dark, lifelong loneliness for which there is no cure.” (52)  When … Read More

“Trust that the presence of long-held stories in your memories are there for reasons beyond entertainment.”

shadiow bookJohn Dewey, one of my heroes, said that you don’t learn from experience — you learn from thinking about your experience. That’s the idea that What Our Stories Teach Us is based on. Linda K. Shadiow outlines a three-step process of description, interpretation, and analysis. Is this sort of reflection … Read More