No, I’m not repeating high school.  But I had recently read an article in the NewYork Times by an English teacher at a public school in Manhattan.  Claire Needell Hollander said this: We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” When we read...

On April 22, I posted a review of a wonderful book by Geraldine Brooks called People of the Book.  I was so taken with her story that I immediately contacted the author through her publicist at Viking/Penguin, Louise Braverman. What I had not thought to take into...

As I said in an earlier post, I like a book that challenges me.  I am most entertained when I am taken to a place or time or into the life of someone that is new to me.  I also enjoy a book that employs extraordinary writing.  Geraldine Brooks’ 2009...

Sometimes research for a book can take an author on a most interesting journey.  Last week when I was in Boston my daughter, a librarian, told me about a series of brown bag poetry readings happening at the Longfellow House in Cambridge in honor of NationalPoetry...

Saw an awesome play this weekend:  A Thousand Words, scripted by Madison playwright Gwendolyn Rice and produced by Madison’s own Forward Theater Company.   The tease was a stash of photos taken in Havana, Cuba in 1933 by Depression era photographer...