On my honeymoon in London, my favorite place to visit was Hampstead Heath, where John Keats’ House is. Mike and I wandered around on a cloudy November afternoon, my heart pounding as I walked in every room, imagining the spirit of my favorite British poet. Before we left, I bought a mug with a quote [...]
{ 4 comments }
The scariest movie I’ve seen in years is 28 Days Later, the 2003 British film where people turn into flesh-eating zombies when a science experiment goes awry. The apocalyptic images of abandoned houses, empty streets, ravaged mini-marts and darkened skyscrapers haunted my dreams for weeks, which is why I never watched the movie again, despite [...]
{ 2 comments }
The English language is a real bitch, isn’t it? Who hasn’t, at some time or other, made the mistake of putting the wrong vowel in a word, even when that vowel gives the word an entirely different meaning? (This is the point in a classroom where I’d notice the deadpan stares of my students and [...]
{ 13 comments }
If Allison Weir, celebrated British royal biographer, were to leap into the future and write about my daughter centuries after her magnificent life, I believe the story would begin something like this: Madeleine was clever, though her red hair symbolized an uneven temperament and a penchant for theatrics. Even at the tender age of 21 [...]
{ 9 comments }
The Maladjusted Book Club September pick is the wonderful short story collection from Robin Black, titled If I Loved You, I’d Tell You This. It’s by far one of the best books I read in a long time, full of characters and circumstances that continue to linger in my head long after I’ve closed the [...]
{ 7 comments }
People don’t read poetry. Maybe they stopped when TV was invented. And yet, like poet Wislawa Szymborska, I “clutch on to it, / as to a saving bannister.” When I hear a great poem, a poem that takes my breath away, I am filled with so many emotions. Calm, for the moment I stopped and [...]
{ 5 comments }
When I started college, I didn’t have a computer. I had never been on the internet, either, so when someone told me I should check it out, I had to write down the steps it took to insert a “URL” into a “tool bar.” What was this “world wide web” business? In pencil on yellow [...]
{ 12 comments }
I have three words to describe The Beatles. Boring. Flaccid. Did I mention boring? I know that technically, this is a matter of taste, but personally, I have to pronounce the Rolling Stones as the clear first choice when it comes to dynamic, immortal rock bands of the 1960′s. In Casa de Jana, there is [...]
{ 5 comments }
To the outsider, SuperWoman hasn’t changed at all due to her reading diet. She is still using her laser eyes to watch the goings on in the neighborhood, like the wolf-dog who miraculously gets out of his front door and wanders around the street, or the mail carrier who keeps changing his sex from one day [...]
{ 5 comments }
This week, I am on a reading diet. I am skipping all reading—whether it be blogs I love (sorry!), novels, articles, news stories (meh!), Facebook and Twitter statuses…you name it. It’s a challenge, for sure. But I am ready, and willing and eager to see where it takes me. (Actually, to be blunt, I’m hoping [...]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
