Posts made in October, 2009

At last week’s family storytime I read stories about monsters. All the best Halloween books were checked out, but there are a ton of monster stories out there. Some of the stories chosen for storytime were: Monster Goose by Judy Sierra, Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems, Harry and the Terrible Whatzit by Dick Gackenbach, Shrek by William Steig, Dexter Bexley and the Big Blue Beastie by Joel Stewart, Dogzilla by Dav Pilkey and There’s a Nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer. One thing I noticed over and over again in these books, and some others that I didn’t use for storytime was the theme of monsters turning out to be not so bad after all. In story after story a monster, who stands for all those scary things that we are afraid of,...

“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Toni Morrison In response to my last post Christina noted how her search for a door to Narnia led her to start writing. That reminded me of the above Toni Morrison quote. Sometimes I feel lost. I don’t know what I should be writing. It’s not an absence of ideas, but too many of them swirling around in my cluttered head. I find myself thinking that I should work on the book that would seem most likely to sell, but then I recall this Toni Morrison quote, and am reminded of the fact that the book I need to write is the book that I would be most inclined to read. There’s a much repeated adage that writers should write what they...

I just finished reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I think I was two thirds of the way through this book before I realized what it was really about, and not until the very end did I realize that the book is brilliant. Described by some as Harry Potter for grown-ups, The Magicians is more of a book that takes a look at the world of fantasy literature from an adult perspective, which is not the same thing as Harry Potter for grown-ups. Anyone who has ever fallen in love with a novel has probably wished, at least for a little while that they could have escaped into the world depicted there. The protagonist of The Magicians actually gets to live out this fantasy, only to find that it is not the wonderful experience he expected. This actually made me think of Mr....

It’s always been a dream of mine to live in a little log cabin in the woods, and while I am pretty sure I would be fine doing without most modern conveniences, I don’t know how well I would do without access to the internet. Once again this week (this is after a couple of weeks ago when internet service was down for nearly a week at home) I found myself without access to the internet. As it turned out this time around, the problem was on my end, but until I figured this out and figured out how to fix it, it was very frustrating. Besides all the ways we have come to rely on the internet for keeping in touch with friends and family as well as keeping up with what is going on in the world. I actually use the computer at home for actual work, my day job...