Category Archives: Books

Stigma Redux

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Kathy

I just finished reading Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel Water for Elephants. It’s an enjoyable read, and she did an impressive amount of research. It’s fun and dumb. Thinking over the ending, I was reminded of my redemptive violence post. Since … Continue reading →

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Waiting for Godoprah

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Kathy

Yesterday I had an amusing point/counterpoint experience. I saw Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot for the first time. Then I watched the last episode of Oprah. Seeing these two back to back is enough to give you whiplash. Nobody knows … Continue reading →

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Acedia and Mom

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Kathy

I just finished reading Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and A Writer’s Life (2008) by Kathleen Norris, a spiritual writer known for her meditative memoirs Dakota, The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace, and The Virgin of Bennington. In this most recent book, Norris spends a … Continue reading →

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Check It Off — Lord Jim

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Kathy

Back-to-back classics. I just read Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim for the first time. It’s been sitting on the shelf lo these many years, reputedly one of John’s favorite books, and I finally took it down to read. I wonder if … Continue reading →

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Pride and Prejudice and BPD

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Kathy

My book group just discussed Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and since then I’ve been pondering what seems to me to be one of its themes. Austen intends for us, by the end of the book, to like Elizabeth and Darcy, … Continue reading →

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“Women Hold Up Half the Sky” (a Chinese Proverb)

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Kathy

It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century. When I read this line aloud to my husband, he … Continue reading →

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Gridlock

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Kathy

Yesterday we had a big snowstorm here in Cleveland. My drive home from work – normally about half an hour — took five hours. That’s right. Five hours. 2:30 to 7:30. Broad daylight to darkness. Along about the three-hour mark, … Continue reading →

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Thankfulness

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Kathy

I’m grateful for all the usual things. I’m lucky not to have to worry about clean water, cholera, mudslides, gang violence, political oppression, an adequate diet, and so on and on. Middle-class Americans are set apart from so much of … Continue reading →

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Waiting for Jonathan Kozol

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Kathy

I saw Waiting for ‘Superman’ today, the much-hyped documentary by Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). I was all set to defend the movie to my teacher friends who decry its anti-union sensibility, some of whom won’t even see it … Continue reading →

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Another Day…

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Kathy

…another marvelous CSU story. This morning I went off on a tangent in Latin 201, telling my students I reread Crime and Punishment this summer and making some obscure connection between the Dostoevsky novel and our text, the Cupid and … Continue reading →

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