Category Archives: Books

Question of the Day

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Kathy

Actually, two questions. Do you feel you have to finish a book once you start it, or are you okay with sometimes quitting on a book? If the latter, what are your criteria? How much of a chance do you … Continue reading →

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Little Free Book

Posted on January 1, 2023 by Kathy

Occasionally someone will ask me how I choose what to read. It’s a hard question to answer, because there’s no overriding pattern to my choices. One book group meets once a month, the other every other month. That makes about … Continue reading →

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Another Marvelous Thing

Posted on December 27, 2022 by Kathy

Laurie Colwin wrote memorable, funny novels (Happy All the Time, Family Happiness); ironic, pithy short stories (The Lone Pilgrim and other collections); and two volumes of essays about food: Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen and More Home Cooking: … Continue reading →

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Learning from Chaser

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Kathy

I used to introduce my Latin students to fundamental grammar by telling them about Chaser, the dog who knew a thousand words. Chaser, I would explain, learned the meaning of verbs such as fetch, paw (as in pawing her toys), … Continue reading →

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Truth or Consequences?

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Kathy

How true to life should a memoir be? Is bending the facts or changing chronology allowed? How about just making stuff up? Many of us remember the controversy arising from James Frey’s 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces, which, after … Continue reading →

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Kalends, Calendars, and Intercalation

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Kathy

Our word calendar comes from the Latin word kalendae, or kalends, which named the first day of the month. (For a while, Latin used k instead of c before the letter a. Try not to pay attention to this right … Continue reading →

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An Embarrassment of Desserts

Posted on November 21, 2022 by Kathy

When you create meringues, you have egg yolks left over. When you bake crème brulee, you have egg whites left over. Might as well make both! The meringues were going to a friend who recently suffered a loss in her … Continue reading →

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Light(er) Reading

Posted on November 20, 2022 by Kathy

In November, I have read two new celebrity memoirs: Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing and Geena Davis’s Dying of Politeness. Lest you judge me, I have also finished rereading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, a famous … Continue reading →

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Changed by Ovid

Posted on November 12, 2022 by Kathy

(Sexual violence and rape are mentioned in this post.) There once was an eccentric English professor at Cleveland State, a kind of eminence-grise (at least in his own mind), who taught obscure languages and literature. I had never met him … Continue reading →

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More about Dogs

Posted on November 9, 2022 by Kathy

Just finished reading The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves. Last week, I shared what I learned about altricial species (whose young need a lot of care) and precocial species (whose young are nearly self-sufficient). Near the end … Continue reading →

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