My Christmas read was kind of a dud
Snow by John Banville
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a beautifully written but dull book. I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the snowy landscape wasn’t particularly evocative of any specific place (and I did so want it to feel really Irish), and did nothing to heighten tension. It’s really only about two and a half stars worth of the same old story of priests abusing children.
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My Dearest Bea: Love Letters from the USS Midway by Peyton H. Roberts My rating: 4 of 5 stars I don’t know what it is about epistolary books, but lately I can’t get enough of them. Something the author says in her postscript rang true to me: “As handwritten correspondence becomes a lost pastime, I…
Here’s the not-fun news about having a book coming out: you have to get out of your lil bubbly creative comfort zone and ask people for help. The help that you’re not paying for, but people’s time and creative energy. For me, for whom these are my most greedily hoarded resources, this is hard hard hard to do. It’s not my default to ask for things. I always assume the other person will groan inwardly at a request from one more writer coming at them, palm up.
But we all know what happens when you assume, right?
I like a good, quantifiable goal. I’m sure you’ve seen S.M.A.R.T. goals on a briefing slide somewhere, but if you haven’t tripped over that acronym before, you can read about it here. It’s hokey but I like them, and keep my goals and New Years resolutions achievable and quantifiable – write 300 words a day,…
First, the unboxing video! Videos of writers opening boxes of their books are A Thing. By now you’ve all seen the cover of Playing Army, but this is where I hold the physical book in my hand for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuKDmHRCgfQ Yay! And thank you to Colette for making the video, but I wish…
I have often thought that putting together a group exercise class is like telling a story: first, there’s a beginning. There are peaks and valleys and a conclusion you hope feels satisfying. A class literally moves people. It makes them feel things and teaches them something about themselves. Ideally, an exercise class uses its physical…
As you probably know, the reason for this (American) long weekend is to honor the memory of those who died while serving their country. As ever, I’ll be thinking about my friend Marty, who died 30 years ago so heartbreakingly, so needlessly, and so close to Memorial Day. It also feels like a good time…