Olympics and Books

February 8, 2026

Today was all about the Olympics and finishing my book (which I really enjoyed and recommend!)

Book Nook

February 2, 2026

There is just something so inviting about a cozy little book nook. Everytime I see this space in my house it makes me happy.

First Books of 2024

January 13, 2024

I set my reading goal at 30 books this year, an increase of two books over last year. These were the first two entries for 2024. I enjoyed parts of both books, but didn't fall in love with them. I am also trying to do better about not holding onto to books I don't absolutely love when I read them, so I am currently trying to figure out just who I believe I know who will enjoy these next so that I can pass them on. It it really a lot of fun to play book matchmaker.

How is This 2022?

January 30, 2022

I have noticed, over the past few months, that there has been a greater push for the banning of books, or the pulling of books from the school libraries and reading lists.  The idea of challenging books is not new; there have always been groups of people who deem it their 'responsibility' to shield the children of our society from ideas they decide are unacceptable or inappropriate.  The problem of course, is that one group of people deciding what is appropriate for all children to have access to means that they are by default denying SOMEONE ELSE'S children that access.  You don't want to let your child read The Great Gatsby?  Well, by all means, don't have your child read it.  You don't want your kid to have access to The Hate U Give?  That is your prerogative.  You think your child isn't mature enough for the themes in The Handmaid's Tale?  Fair enough.  You know your kid. Don't have them read it.  But to decide for your child, and mine, and everyone else's in the community that somehow your child's maturity and your own sensitivity or perception of the world is the litmus test by which all books should be assessed?  No.  Absolutley not.  How is it possible that in the year 2022 we are seeing a resurgence of this pompous, righteous attitude, supported by people in power in our communities?  Literature is meant to elicit empathy, anger, love, joy, sadness.  It is meant to show us who we are as humans--the strong resilient side, the compassionate side, and yes, even the ugly side.  It's meant to challenge us to think about they ways in which we as humans have grown, have persevered, have connected--and it's meant to show us how we have hurt one another, how we have unjustly profited from or abused people.  We cannot ignore the dark side of humanity and hope to avoid it rising its ugly head again.  We cannot truly celebrate all that is beautiful in humanity if we cannot see what we must rise above.  We are both there in the mirror, and that doesn't go away if the mirror is cast aside.  We only conquer what we want to fight against in our society if we can drag it out into the open, dig in deep and examine it closely, and strip it of its power.  

A Treasure Trove of Books

 January 24, 2022

I gave my students several prompts to choose from to write some literacy narratives: stories about the way in which people, moments, or events helped shape their sense of themselves as readers and writers.  I thought I'd write to a couple of the prompts along with them.

My tendency toward book hoarding might very well have begun when I was the very young age of seven or eight.  I enjoyed reading, but probably loved all subjects equally at that age–I hadn’t really seen a front-runner emerge in terms of academic interests.  However, a random instance of the right place at the right time probably went a long way toward tipping the scales.

My brother and I were bus riders.  Our parents worked, so we clamored on the neighborhood school bus at the end of each day and got deposited some four or five blocks from our house.  We walked the rest of the way home alongside a handful of other kids from our block, with Gary tasked with making sure I didn’t get lost on the way.

Several weeks after walking the familiar route home, one day we saw a giant orange dumpster parked in front of one of the houses a couple of blocks from our house.  I don’t know why the first instinct of a couple of the boys was to climb up and peek in since we all knew that dumpsters were for trash,  but I suppose they thought they might be lucky and find an old discarded baseball glove or deflated basketball, or even an old broomstick handle that they could fashion into a makeshift sword to wield at the rest of us for fun.

The big dumpsters have metal ladders permanently affixed to the side.  The curious boys scrambled up and surveyed the possibilities.  One by one they climbed back down, scowling in disappointment. Gary asked what they had seen.  “Worthless!” one of the boys grumbled.  “The whole thing is filled with old books!”  My ears perked up.  Gary’s did too.  He climbed up.

“They’re right, Donna! Tons of books!”  He disappeared down into the dumpster and scoured the titles.  He came back down with a few.  I begged him to let me find some books too, and he told me I could as long as I was careful.  I could barely contain my excitement. Once I reached the top of the ladder my eyes were greeted with a veritable treasure trove.  Hundreds and hundreds of books had been tossed in–paperbacks, hardbacks, westerns, romance, classics–as far as the eye could see.  Some of them were missing book jackets or had torn pages, some of them were well-worn and others were in much better condition.  It was as if an entire library had been upended into the dumpster.  I reached down and picked up a book or two to read the back of the dust jacket to see which ones I wanted to take.  I got a little mired in indecision.  How could I just pick a few?

Gary grew impatient.  He started yelling at me to get back out of the dumpster so that we could get home and have our afternoon snack.  Although he was excited by getting a ‘new’ book or two, he wasn’t about to give up milk and cookies because of it.  I told him I was having a hard time deciding.  He said I could just grab a couple now and we could bring a bag the next day and take several more.  That seemed reasonable.  I took two that I had been contemplating and climbed my way back out of the dumpster.  I was thrilled.  Books, for free?  With the prospect of seemingly infinitely more tomorrow?  I’m quite sure that I skipped all the way home, unable to contain my joy.

The next day, I anticipated mining the mountain of books all day long.  Gary and I had both brought bags from home to fill.  After school, we walked quickly toward our intended destination.  We rounded the corner to the street with the dumpster.  It was gone!  All of my excitement was crushed.  Whoever had scheduled the dumpster to be delivered to the house had apparently already had it sent away, presumably to the local dump.  What a waste!  What a travesty!  I had been THISCLOSE to having more books than I could possibly carry, and that dream was dashed in an instant.  Never mind that most of those books were not likely books that would hold the interest and imagination of a seven-year-old.  But the hope that maybe they were…it was heartbreaking.  The books had been there, and then they vanished.  

Years later, and more books than I can possibly count later, I have become something of a book hoarder.  I haven’t read all of my books, though I’ve read many of them, and the fact that I own books I’ve yet to read certainly doesn’t stop me from buying new ones when a new title or storyline piques my interest.  I can only imagine that when I see a new book that speaks to me, whispers its possibilities in my ear, there’s a seven-year-old girl whispering in my other ear, “Take it now while you can!  Who knows if it will still be here tomorrow?”

Genres that Shaped My Early Reading Self

 January 17, 2022

I gave my students several prompts to choose from to write some literacy narratives: stories about the way in which people, moments, or events helped shape their sense of themselves as readers and writers.  I thought I'd write to a couple of the prompts along with them.

When I was an elementary student, there were a lot of phases I went through in terms of genres I read.  The earliest I can remember was probably humorous poems.  I remember being introduced to a poem by my second-grade teacher called “The Backwards Poem”.  I can still recite it to this day.  It began, “One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight.”  My little primary school brain thought it to be a very clever poem, and I sought out other humorous poets, like Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss.  The sing-song nature of these poems was infectious and delightful to me. I loved the musicality and the rhythm in them.  I’m sure my mother, on the other hand, got tired of hearing me say, “Hey Mom–listen to this one!” over and over again while she was trying to cook dinner and clean up after five young children every night.

About this time I was also very invested in comic books.  Most specifically, I loved the Archie comics, but I also read a fair share of Daffy Duck, Richie Rich, and a wide variety of superhero comics.  I don’t know when I first got ahold of one of those brightly colored magazines that told the antics of Archie and the gang, but I do know that I associated those comics with trips to visit my grandparents.  Every year my parents would pile all five of their California kids into the back of our 1970’s Plymouth Station Wagon and we would make the long trek across five states to visit Grandma and Grandpa Mayes for a white Christmas.  Although it didn’t always snow, most years it did, and it was magical for kids who lived in Garden Grove, California, where the winters consisted of only slightly chilly temperatures in the deep of winter.  In order to occupy us on those long drives–it must have been quite the undertaking to drive five kids under 11 halfway across the country–my mom gave us some of our Christmas presents early.  Anything that could entertain us on the road became an early gift:  comic books, Colorforms, Rubic’s cubes (for the older kids), baby dolls, toy trucks, or anything that didn’t have too many pieces and didn’t make noise.  Comic books were one of the favorites.

In my later elementary years, I found mythology.  There was a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology that I must have checked out and re-read five or six times during my fourth-grade year. I was fascinated by the capricious ways the gods manipulated humans and each other.  They were often temperamental and fickle, but just as frequently cunning and creative, and sometimes sympathetic.  It was my first real glimpse of characters with depth and multi-faceted personalities.  The Dick and Jane readers we had when I was learning to read didn’t have motive or struggle or conflict; that simply wasn’t their purpose.  But these mythological stories were not only meant to teach lessons; they intended to be entertaining and engaging, and they were.  It wasn’t until much later that I learned that what I thought of as ‘mythology’ was only one set–albeit a well-known set–of cultural myths handed down from generation to generation.  Learning the Greek myths weren’t the only kinds of cultural mythologies was one of my initial epiphanies that societies often privilege one voice over all others, and that seeing those other voices and stories and cultures was an act of stepping outside of one’s own experience in the world to learn about others.  In order to learn about other cultures’ mythologies, I had to go out of my way to find them.

In fifth grade, I found my way into fairy tales.  It was a natural progression from the mythological stories I had been reading.  I don’t mean the Disney versions of the tales, I mean the dark and sometimes gruesome stories of the Brothers Grimm.  Again, my school library was the home of a giant book of these tales, and after having checked out this book a couple of times to read, I saw that there was another book, similar in size and content.  I started digging into the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson.  The horrifying “The Red Shoes” and the ridiculous “The Emperor’s New Clothes” were among my favorites.  It’s strange that although I strove in real life to be friendly, kind, and happy, and was very much a people-pleaser, I was drawn to some relatively dark stories where people’s bad behaviors were often dealt with through some of the harshest punishments meted out.

At the same time I was deeply entrenched in the worlds of fairy godmothers and evil goblins and magic and spells, I also stumbled upon one of the first non-fiction books I ever remember reading.  Somehow I stumbled upon Helen Keller’s The Story of My Life, and it was transformative.  I read about a young girl who was trapped in her silent and dark world, frustrated and angry about not being able to communicate with anyone.  Her world collided with Annie Sullivan, seemingly the only person who, with persistence and determination, could manage to slowly chip away at the wall Keller found herself behind.  Deaf and blind during that time in history, Keller could easily have been pushed aside, abandoned, or worse, and yet fortune or destiny or chance matched her with the woman who would teach her the way to communicate the fierce intellect and fiery spirit that had been bound up inside her.  It was another book I read and re-read, and it made me realize two very important things.  The first was that we never really know what is going on in someone else’s mind unless they are willing or able to share it.  The second was that people’s lives, their everyday existence, could be a story.  Our lives are stories.  Every one of us has one to share.  I went on to read other autobiographies and biographies, notable among them was the story of Joan of Arc.  Her faith, confidence, and selflessness were undeniably inspirational and awe-inspiring.  And at such a young age!  I guess even in my pre-teen days, I was drawn to stories of strong powerful women who made their mark.

At this point in my young reading life, my fiction and non-fiction fares continued on parallel lines.  Fiction found me moving from fairy tales to stories of witches and witchcraft, while my interest in non-fiction progressed from learning about strong people in history to learning about history itself.  I became engrossed in World War II, and more specifically, the Holocaust.  If my mother had paid the least bit of attention to what I was reading, she might have been concerned.  She didn’t, however.  I was a good kid, did very well in school, and caused no trouble for anyone.  It never even occurred to her to pay attention to what I was reading; she was just happy I could occupy myself for long stretches of time.  Not that I was reading either of those genres as how-to manuals or anything.  The stories about witches and witchcraft tended toward the lighthearted and fanciful, something like “Bewitched”, but there was definitely a dark and sinister tone to some of the books I read.  I didn’t get too entrenched, though, because while I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I believed in that kind of supernatural power, I was smart enough to know I didn’t want to take any chances of accidentally signaling to some otherworldly figure that I might be interested in joining their ranks or somehow raising their ire.  (To this day, this is my rationale for not dabbling in such seemingly childish yet somehow sinister games like playing with a Ouija board.)  I imagine my interest in reading so much in this genre during this time, if I had to step back and look at it objectively, is that there was a lot of tension and instability in my household during that time, over which I had no control.  Perhaps reading about witches who had the power to manipulate and change circumstances for themselves or others gave me a little solace and a vicarious sense of power.  The Holocaust books I read during that time were almost entirely first-hand accounts of survivors of the concentration camps–an extension of my autobiography phase–and served as a counterpoint to the books about witchcraft.  Books about witchcraft were about wielding power over others, whereas survival memoirs were about the physical, emotional, and spiritual damage done to human beings when those in power give in to their unfettered desire for control and lose sight of humanity.  The atrocities I read about in the books about the Holocaust were far more horrific than anything I read about in the fictional stories of revenge-driven witches.  Humans have great potential for rising above adverse circumstances and persevering through trauma, but so do we have a terrible potential to give in to our basest desires and put self above all others.  It is up to us to decide which story we want written about us in the end.

From a young age, books have been a constant companion for me.  They were a way for me to not just try on identities and learn about parts of myself that were fledgling characteristics at the time, but also to try on ideas that were unfamiliar to me. They allowed me to grow an understanding of the world around me and begin to understand the nature of human beings, both good and evil, from a safe space within the confines of my home and my library. I retreated into the world in between pages so that I could step out into the world I inhabited with a better understanding of how I fit into it. 

Gratitude

 January 9, 2022

There is a lot going on in the world that causes stress, anxiety, and sadness.  That's why it's important to take time frequently to think about the things for which we are grateful.  Here are five things I am grateful for today:

1.  I am grateful I am getting to spend time with Nicholas while he is staying with me, before he moves to start his new job.  Since the kids are all grown up, the extended times with them are fewer and farther between.

2.  I am grateful I get to text or talk with my kids several days each week.  I like to talk to them, and they like to talk to me!

3.  I am so grateful that although Nicholas got Covid, he is experiencing relatively mild symptoms.

4.  I am grateful for Lisa and Mo.  Man, I don't know where I'd be without those two.  They are my sounding boards, they make me laugh, and they check in on me all the time.  I do the same for them.  Having best friends makes doing life wonderful.

5.  I am grateful for a seemingly endless supply of books.  So many ideas and stories we can inhabit for a time.  It's kind of mind-blowing to think about the millions of ideas and perspectives out there that we can enjoy and learn from.  That's pretty cool!

Found Poetry, Book Title Edition #3

February 9, 2020

Here today,
Dreamland, under the
never sky...the spectacular now.
No time for goodbye.

In twenty years,
what was mine, gone.
Too far.
Waiting for normal.

Found Poetry, Book Title Edition

February 3, 2020

In twenty years,
where or when you reach me
...an invisible thread, written
   on the body--
the distance between
lost and
found.

Found Poetry, Book Title Edition

January 24, 2020

One moment...incendiary.
Catalyst.
Everything, everything-
things not seen, big little lies.
After the game,
emotionally weird.
Vanishing acts...

Out of My Mind

January 14, 2018

A couple of years ago at the CATE conference I attended, I had the pleasure of hearing author Sharon Draper speak and read from her book, Out of My Mind.  She was incredibly engaging, and not surprisingly, a wonderful storyteller.  I actually got to meet her and she autographed a copy of her novel for me.

 It's a Young Adult novel, which I try to read quite a bit of in order to make good recommendations to my students.  This novel is about a fifth grade girl with an incredible mind who suffers from cerebral palsy.  Her condition, in addition to severely affecting her mobility, disrupts her ability to speak.  Doctors and teachers alike treat her as if she is incapable of much mental processing at all, although her mother, her beloved neighbor, and a couple of her teachers see a spark that shows she is able to process a good deal more than she can communicate.  When she finally gets a computer that allows her to "speak", she and those around her learn about her photographic memory and her incredible intelligence.

The writing style is engaging and keeps the reader invested.  Even though I was sure a couple of times I knew where the plot was going, there were a couple of plot turns that I didn't see coming, and I appreciated that.  Draper doesn't turn this book into a "And everyone who had ever treated her badly repented and became wonderful human beings" or even a "Melody was perfect and amazing and when she got her computer, she was even more perfect and amazing" kind of book.  Melody, the protagonist, has a disability but she isn't idealized.  She's allowed to be a typical 5th grader, with some ugly stubborness and moodiness, as well as empathy and reflectiveness.  She's also surrounded by people who are flawed and human--who sometimes make big mistakes.  They are 'real' humans dealing with the kind of real-life emotions that the rest of us go through.  It's not always an easy road, but we appreciate that we are on it with folks who respond like people we might know.

Reading Plan

January 12, 2018

One of my resolutions for this year is to do a little more reading for pleasure, now that I have finished my Master's degree.  I love to read, but it's had to take a bit of a back seat in the past two and a half years as I was working on all the reading I had to do for the program.  Weirdly, the first book I finished for the year was a business book we were given to read at work on dysfunctional work teams and how to create healthier environments.  Not the kind of book I would pick up on my own, but it wasn't bad, actually.  I tend to rotate among classics, young adult fiction (so that I can make recommendations to my students) contemporary fiction, and non-fiction.  Usually I read more than one book at a time, since my reading choice is dictated by my mood.  I'm not the fastest reader, so I'm not one who can pick up a book and polish it off in an afternoon, so my moods fluctuate as I'm progressing through a novel over the course of a couple of weeks.  Today my books of choice are Written on the Body by Winterson (a classic recommended by a friend), Out of My Mind by Draper (a YA novel by an author I actually had the privilege of hearing read from this book and meeting at a signing), and The Funny Thing Is by Ellen Degeneres (a woman I have great respect for because of her positive energy and outlook). 

Let Me Be a Book Nerd for Just a Minute

September 8, 2015

When I woke up and looked on my Facebook feed first thing (yes, I'm addicted to social media), I saw that my favorite author, Margaret Atwood, was coming to Northern California for a speaking engagement.  ONE stop on her tour in all of California, and it's just three hours away.  This is the author of my all-time favorite book, The Handmaid's Tale, which is the topic of my Master's thesis in literature, and which I have introduced countless students to over the years in my AP Lit classes.  It combines dystopian fiction and feminism, two of my favorite things!  It has truly been one of the most influential books in my life. Naturally, I had to see if there was any way I could swing it to go.  I don't know that I'll ever have another opportunity like this, as I've never seen her tour anywhere around here before.  (I think typically she stays in Canada and the U.K., and possibly the East Coast for most of her speaking engagements.)

I think you know where I'm going with this.  I will be attending an event in October where she is promoting and speaking about her new book coming out.  My ticket grants me access to up-front seating, a copy of the new book, and priority place in line for the book signing afterward.  Seriously--I'm giddy!  In just over a month, I will get to meet Margaret Atwood!

Book Scavenger Hunt

January 2, 2015

Yesterday Lisa and I took the kids to Barnes and Noble.  In addition to letting Nicholas and Danielle each get a book of their choice, I also decided I wanted to play a little game, just to do something different and fun.  We all had to look around and find three or four book titles that described something about who we are--titles that resonated with us in some way.  (These were not necessarily books we wanted to read; just apt titles.)  I think we came up with some creative ones!

Nicholas' choices:

Danielle's choices:

My choices:

Lisa's choices:

This Is Where I Leave You

August 20, 2014

Our book club met tonight to discuss our first book, This is Where I Leave You.  This was the first book our group has chosen--our first discussion.  Most of us are Buchanan teachers: Christine, Marci, Jen, Kristin, Tina, Allison, and me.  Let me tell you, these are some really fun, intelligent, and fascinating women!  For the record, the general consensus was that we didn't much like the book, because none of the characters, especially the protagonist, was particularly likable or sympathetic.  Our dislike, however, didn't remotely hinder our conversation, and like all good book discussions, it started out with the book and then expanded to real life connections and general philosophizing. Our book talk was funny, non-stop, and insightful. (The book was about a dysfunctional family, which most of us can relate to, although this particular family had its own special blend of every possible dysfunction concentrated in one fairly small family.)  One of the deciding factors in choosing this book was that it's been made into a movie that's coming out next month, so we had already planned to follow up with a movie night.  Even though we didn't love the book, we watched the movie trailer, which has a fantastic and funny cast, and we think this may be one of the rare cases of the movie being better than the book. We've already chosen our next book and the next meeting date, and I'm already looking forward to getting together with these fantastic ladies again!  I'm really hoping that we don't let the crazy busy-ness of the school year push off our get-togethers--I feel like this is going to be a great way to recharge our batteries if we decide to make it a priority for ourselves.

In Defense of Fiction

March 13, 2014

                I just finished reading a novel called Little Bee, by Chris Cleave.  I came upon this book accidentally, as is often the way I come across a particular book.  I’m a haunter of thrift stores, bargain bins, and garage sales for new and interesting titles to line my bookshelves with, both the ones in my home and the ones in my classroom.  I’m a big believer in the power of the written word to transport and transform, to ignite and incite, and to engross and entertain.  I believe in surrounding myself and my children with words, because I believe it encourages them to know that their voices, too, are powerful.  Entertaining.  Valuable.

                So I came across this book on one of my treasure hunts.  I looked first at the binding, then at the cover, and then at the synopsis on the back.  We tell kids not to judge a book by its cover, but my students—especially my reluctant readers—don’t often know where else to begin.  And if we’re honest, we adults who attempt to guide students through the world of knowledge outside their own worlds, we’ll admit that it’s often where we begin, too.  Why on earth else would publishers and artists expend so much time, energy, and money on what the outside of the book looks like?  If we want people to walk into our house and cozy up on the figurative couch with our ideas, we’re going to want our front porch to be inviting, right?  Of this particular book, Little Bee, I thought the graphics and the title were interesting.  The back cover summary, which intimated a dark secret that bound two women inextricably, was intriguing.  I dropped the book into my cart with several companions, made my purchase, and then set out to divide my new acquisitions between my classroom and home libraries.  Little Bee was one I couldn’t immediately place—not until I’d read it and determined what, in fact, was the secret, and whether or not my classroom was the right home for it.

                I dove in, not knowing what to expect.  Little Bee turned out to be the name of our protagonist, one of two alternating narrators in the work.  The world of Little Bee, a sixteen-year-old illegal immigrant fleeing the horrors of her native Nigeria, is shocking, unsettling.  How she comes to find herself connected to Sarah and her son Charlie is a series of choices, each one setting a subsequent one in motion, until their worlds collide and become simultaneously uncomfortably and comfortably intertwined.  The secret that binds them? I will reveal no more than the back cover of that novel did.  Suffice it to say the secret continues to be revealed and unraveled throughout the course of the novel.  Each piece of the secret that comes to light lays bare another part of the story—and it’s worth digging in deeper to find the whole story.

                It’s not a nice story.  In fact, it takes the reader to some very dark places.  I wanted to look away; I wanted to put down the book and be done.  But it was compelling, you see, shining a light on a place and an injustice most of us will, thankfully, never see in the kind of first-hand nightmare-you-can’t-escape kind of way.  We can put the book down—take a break from it for a while, live our reality, flawed though it may be—and remember that we are not in that place.  But the point is, there are people for whom this is a reality, an existence from which they can’t escape.  And in the end, I had to go back; I had to know what happened to Little Bee and to Sarah.

                In my neighborhood, there are no guerrilla troops raiding villages; there is not a violent power struggle between powerful factions that leaves torn and broken human collateral damage in its wake.  This world I stepped into as a brief visitor is, however, real.  The story is inspired by theft and greed and corruption over real crude oil in a very real Nigeria.  The true events are well-documented and thoroughly researched.  If I’d come across a news article online about the human injustice—the unadulterated disregard for human life at the expense of a land-grab that might yield financial gain—I would almost certainly flick the page or scroll past the story.  I would exercise the kind of purposeful ignorance that many who are comfortable in life often exercise.  If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

                The book, though—it made it real.  Funny thing, that; a fictionalized account is what made the thing real to me.  Why?  Because it humanized the circumstances for me.  It made it personal. I cared about Little Bee’s experience; I cared about her life. I was invested and I was moved.  Her story continued to stay with me when I was not with her, and her story continues to affect me even though I have turned the final page. This is not to say that a non-fiction account couldn’t have done the same thing; this is to say that it didn’t.

                This perhaps sounds like a book review, or possibly the initial workings-out of an analysis.  That is not my intent.  What continued to reverberate in my mind for quite a while after reading the book in addition to the fact that I had been educated about a facet of the modern world I didn’t even know existed was something entirely outside of the story itself.  As teachers of English, we have seen a seismic shift in the past several years regarding the importance of reading.  What do kids need to read in order to be productive citizens?  What do students need in order to adequately and appropriately enter the work force?  Overwhelmingly, the answer from the world of business and even the world of academia has been a sharp aversion to the luxury of reading fiction ‘for fun’ and a turn toward non-fiction.  Functional, informative, necessary.  That’s what our kids need.  They need to be critical thinkers and they need to be problem-solvers.  Nowhere in their world, unless their aspiration is to become a stuffy and quaint 19^th Century Literature professor, will they be asked to read novels to make a living.  Why on earth hold on to such antiquated ideas about English curriculum?  Why bother?  The novel is dead; no one needs to read fiction anymore.  It isn’t relevant.  It isn’t real. 

                Except that it is relevant; it is real.  Unrest in Nigeria is real, and citizens are dying.  Government tyranny and oppression, like Orwell’s 1984 or Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, exist.  Today.  Right now.  Compelling and disturbing choices have resounding and long-lasting effects on the human psyche, such as those illustrated in The Kite Runner or The Poisonwood Bible.  Real?  These authors aren’t writing about characters; they are writing about life.  Real life.  Issues in our world.  Problems that need solved.  Questions that need to be faced.  Questions that need to be answered.  Oh, they’re real, alright.  And although nonfiction writers write about some of these same issues and ask us to contemplate the hard questions, fiction writers dress up those issues in raiment familiar and close to us, so that we may examine them firsthand, walking hand in hand with the characters on their journey.  They allow us to see the human-ness behind the story and see the way in which a person can inhabit the experience in a personal way.  The fiction, in fact, makes it real.  We are drawn in by the cover or by the artwork on the front, and we are dropped headlong into a reality we might never have known we didn’t know.

Functional, informative, necessary.  That’s what reading should be, according to the pundits of the day.  And make no mistake; I am not advocating abstaining from reading nonfiction.  There is a wealth of fascinating, engaging, and informative nonfiction to take in.  But to sweep under the rug the vast landscape of literary fiction as a superfluous luxury is not only erroneous, but dangerous.  Fiction draws us in because we are human, because we want to relate.  And because it draws us in, it is able to delve into what connects us as human beings because we become invested in the lives of those we spend time with—in real life and in between the pages of a book.  Good fiction is functional; it begs us to think and draw parallels and understand what it means to be human.  Good fiction is informative; it shows us vast landscapes, both literal and figurative, that expand our horizons.  Good fiction is necessary; it connects us to each other across time and across place.  It reminds us that there is more that should bind us as humans than that should divide us.

 Functional, informative, necessary.  I suppose all depends really, on how you choose to define those terms.  If you boil them down to the lowest form, the most basic of terms, one might say you only need the barest of essentials.  On the one hand, perhaps one might define that as eliminating ‘superfluous fiction’.  Read only what you need to do in order to function appropriately within the construct of the job you’ve chosen to pursue.  Perhaps you only need to read science documents for your job, or perhaps read government policy.  I would agree that those are necessary skills.  On the other hand, might one not define the most necessary element of our future as the ability to read a common thread of humanity among us?  The ability to put a human face to the issues that need our problem-solvers and our critical thinkers?  This is not a luxury or a past-time for the idle; this is what we need as a society.  We need never to forget our connectedness, and fiction allows us to remember in a real and personal way.  It may, as it turns out, be exactly what we need.

And It's Only Tuesday

February 18, 2014

It's been an eventful few days.

--Traveled to San Diego for the CATE conference with my friend Julie
--Met a vibrant and energetic new friend at CATE
--Met several authors and got signed copies of several novels
--Met an author/artist who designed some of the computer graphics on blockbuster movies who is interested in coming to talk to our robotics team
--Got to visit with Bree twice while I was down in San Diego
--Got pulled over by the police who let me know that unbeknownst to me, I was driving around with both taillights out. (He was kind and didn't give me a ticket, thank goodness.)
--Went to my fourth Rick Springfield concert with my friend Francine
--Had a beautiful belated Valentine's dinner at Capo's with Doug
--Woke up this morning to discover that my debit card had been hacked and frozen
--Got a letter from the school acknowledging Nicholas' Honor Roll from 1st semester
--Found out that as a freshman, Danielle beat out several upperclassmen to fall in the top five discus throwers who qualify to throw at the upcoming track meet
--Got a little bit of a family bombshell revealed this evening

All that and it's only Tuesday.

There's Got to Be a Book in Here Somewhere

February 18, 2014

For the conference I attended in San Diego this weekend, I traveled with a long-time colleague.  When we got to the conference, she ran into an old friend she hadn't seen in about ten years.  They fell back into immediate familiarity, and the three of us spent a great deal of time together over long, comfortable meals full of food, drink, and lots of conversation. As new friends often do, we shared quite a lot about our backgrounds and histories, tossing about the stories and anecdotes that shaped our particular paths in life.  Seriously, get three articulate, passionate, creative writers and storytellers together--the entertainment just keeps going.  We often think our own lives to be fairly mundane and pedestrian because we were there, of course, so it seems matter of course to us.  However, as I think back on the memories and situations that came up in the course of the conversation, I am struck once again that if seen by the objective eye, my life might not be quite so mundane as I often think it to be.
I shared stories, to name a few, about...
--the stream of illegal immigrants my parents hired as nannies when we were young in order to give them a start in their new country
--the morbid fear of knives I developed--and still have--because a babysitter (not one of the illegal ones) chased us to our neighbor's house, threatening to kill us
--the time my brother nearly blinded me as a very young girl
--the time my brother nearly blinded my sister as a slightly older young girl
--the time my brother smashed through our patio door to prove he had 'learned' karate
--the time we blindfolded and tied up my younger brother and left him, forgotten, in our attic for several hours
--the time I was homeless for a short while in junior high
--the time my parents bought a private school and we tried to make a run of it for the blink of an eye before they had to shut it down for financial reasons and we were shuttled back to public school
--the private investigator my father hired to spy on us during high school
--the time a party at my apartment (thrown by my roommate, who just happened to be my brother) very nearly ended my teaching career before it ever began
--the time I found nearly $4000 worth of drugs in my apartment
--the last time I ever saw my dad alive

We did, as I said, a LOT of talking.  My counterparts shared just as much of their own histories, which were fascinating and as foreign to me as my experiences were to them.  At the end of the weekend, we came away with two things: we all really enjoyed each others' company, and we all quite possibly have a book in us somewhere.  I mean, I could write a whole book on my brother alone!  Someday...

Gotta Love Ryan Gosling

March 30, 2013

One of the books Bree found while we were shopping today.  There are some pretty funny Gosling memes that come up during my feminist unit in my AP Lit class.  They crack me up!

Strange Book Titles

July 13, 2011

I love books--all kinds. I love classics, autobiographies, teen fiction, chick lit, non-fiction, trivia--lots of variety in my reading diet. However, my search for books and weird sense of curiosity every once in awhile sends me off on a Google search for weirdly-titled books. You know, the ones that you'd never in a million years think would make it past a publisher, yet somehow still do. There's a niche market for just about everything, it seems. Here's some of the ones that turned up in my most recent search for odd titles. Just so you know, I think these titles are funny, but not nearly funny enough to entice me to read any of them!

1. What is Your Poo Telling You? Um...whatever it is, I don't want to hear it!

2. Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre What kind of freak parents are reading this to their kids? Let the nightmares begin!
3. Reusing Old Graves The Gold Standard in recycling.

4. Whose Bottom is This? And to think, most pre-schoolers can only identify animals by their faces.

5. Living With Crazy Buttocks Speaking of posteriors, I thought we as a society just had to worry about big butts. Now we have to worry about crazy ones, too?

6. I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen I don't even want to know....and yet I do.

7. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read Ah, how's that for irony? You have to actually read this book to know how to talk about the book you haven't read.

8. How To Avoid Huge Ships Okay, first of all? Get out of their way! Why does one need an entire book on this? And secondly? What was so unclear in the first book that this text required a second edition?

9. Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them: How To Keep Your Tractors Happy and Your Family Running Gotta love a man with his priorities in order.

10. Curbside Consultation of the Colon What on God's green earth would possess you to have a consultation about your colon curbside? Borrow some milk curbside? Yes. Chat about the neighbor's gardening prowess curbside? Sure. Organize the next block yard sale curbside? Of course. But consult about your colon? Not for me, thankyouverymuch.

11. Cooking With Pooh Oh, somebody thought he was very clever, no? He's probably still chuckling to himself about this one.

12. Cheese Problems Solved Cheese problems? Is this an issue? I had no idea. As far as I'm concerned, cheese = goodness. What problems could there possibly be?

13. Anybody Can Be Cool...But Awesome Takes Practice I'm so excited! With a little practice, I can be awesome! Who knew? Oh wait...how does one practice awesome???

14. Don't Tell Mom I Work On the Rigs. She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse Because how could Mom hold her head up if she had to tell folks I'm not tickling the ivories anymore?