Skip to content

News & Book Reviews — Page 2

Managing Grief and Loss Over the Holidays

Ways to handle holiday grief: avoid anticipatory grief, serve others, embrace a larger context, make it a time of memorial and mourning.

Read more

Vladimir Nabokov’s PNIN

On vacation, I always try to fill a hole in my literary knowledge by bringing along a book I aspired to read. This time it was Nabokov and Alice and Wonderland. The only Nabokov I had was a yellowed, or rather browned, version of a book I’d never heard of, Pnin, 1957 edition. The coverContinue reading “Vladimir Nabokov’s PNIN”

Read more

SILLY WOKE

Flippant “woke” judgments are as dangerous to our union as the superficial judgments made by racists ad embittered patriarchs.

Read more

FRANK, THE GUTTER GUY

Vermont got flooded Sunday through Monday and I had an airline ticket for Tuesday. My house was not threatened and the roads were passable to the airport, but my gutters were not functioning. I left behind two garbage pails to catch the water cascading from my roof and some cardboard leaders to guide the waterContinue reading “FRANK, THE GUTTER GUY”

Read more

Hot weather and me: Hot weather and my dog

I’m not a sun bunny, not at all. I don’t venture out between 10 and 4, so today (85 degrees outside) I ventured out at 4:30 (pm) to transplant some zinnias, dig a deep hole, and transplant a blueberry plant. Hardly what I would call hard labor. It took me less than an hour, andContinue reading “Hot weather and me: Hot weather and my dog”

Read more

U.S. ABORTION LAWS. What a mess.

A righteous person would not subject anyone, including both the woman herself and her loved ones, to the suffering caused by these laws.

Read more

WAS IT CATHARTIC/SAD TO WRITE THIS BOOK?

People from total strangers to close friends often say, “It must have been cathartic to write the book,” or “It must have been sad to write the book. Did you cry a lot?” The answer to both questions is no.

Read more

WHAT’S MY ELEVATOR PITCH?

An author must have an elevator pitch.

Read more

AMERICA AND THE IRAQ WAR: a review of A STRANGER IN YOUR OWN CITY, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

One point of the book is summed up on page 126. An Iraqi man torn between warring factions says, “‘I am between two fires, my Sunni neighbours who would kill me if I don’t go out with them into the street, and the Shia militia.’ He paused before correcting himself. ‘No, three fires—there are the Americans, too.'”

Read more