Monthly Archives: September, 2008
The Historian
Today I finished reading a book I remembered seeing a lot of hype for when it first came out in 2005: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Back then a lot of the reviews compared it to The DaVinci Code, but now that the hype has died down over both books, I can safely say that …
In Our Hands
I am a frequent contributor to Bitch magazine, so of course, I have a vested interest in this question, but also, as a feminist, I want to encourage you to support Bitch in any way, shape or form possible. If you are horrified by the current elections, if you enjoy smart, funny writing by women …
Run
In the midst of this election season, which has been alternately horrifying and depressing, I read Run, a great new novel by Ann Patchett, one of my favorite contemporary novelists. The “run” of the title refers both the physical activity and the electoral one, and throughout the book characters repeat legendary political speeches to each …
September 11th
I’ve been thinking a lot about war lately, because our juniors read The Things They Carried as summer reading, so we’ve been going over it to begin the year. I really enjoy teaching this book, and the students are usually engaged as well, and we spend hours talking about these young men marching off to …
Teaching and Reflecting
I spent a fair amount of time today writing “reflective and guided narrative” statements as part of my first evaluation at my day teaching job. While some of the questions were a bit difficult for me to think about, I think it was very helpful for me to think about patterns in both my strengths …
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