My intention was to find a writing group to join sometime this year. It was still sitting there on my list of Owl and Zebra goals when I was thrilled to find myself, one evening last spring, in a conversation with a new acquaintance about a burgeoning writing group which would happily include me, if…
Let’s just say you have a burgeoning career as an artist and a blogger and you get sick. Or your kids get sick. Or you and your kids get sick right before an intense vacation. We all know that one of the cardinal rules for successful blogging and successful book sales is to remain engaged…
Harry Potter book series, by J. K. Rowling and published by Bloomsbury and Scholastic Inc, 1997-2007 (seven books). As many times as I have mentioned Harry Potter or J. K. Rowling, I have not officially done a review of the book series. So in honor of October, Halloween, and our recent trip to The Wizarding…
Before I get to my movie and TV reviews, I will share a few thoughts on e-books. When it comes to my Kindle, I go kicking and screaming. I really still like the actual book (as much as I still enjoy opening up a canister of new film and giving it a whiff and keep…
The eight book Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery, published from 1908-1939, and read in the Grosset & Dunlap Illustrated Junior Library version (Anne of Green Gables), Signet Classic (Anne of Avonlea), and Bantam Classic (all the rest). There is no avoiding disclosing that I already love these books. I read them…
We are living in the era of the villain. I mean, first there was Lolita, and now there is Dexter. And how many books, movies, TV shows, plays (etc.) which would otherwise be pretty classical in scope, these days, have a very sympathetic take on the villain? Suddenly, vampires are boyfriends and serial killers are…
I have been assailed lately by books in the present tense, which I am assured is not only my experience. (It might be a trend, if not just a thing that lots of blossoming authors do before they learn better.) At first, I wasn’t sure what it was about these encounters that was really disturbing…
“Hamlet,” or “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” William Shakespeare, app. 1600. Read, not the version shown here, but from my leather-bound William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, published by Gramercy Books in 1975. Bonus reviews of four Hamlet movies and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. William Shakespeare (assuming that was his name…
This has been a slow month for lots of things pertaining to this blog, and yet one of the most eventful months of my life. My husband has started his new career as a nurse, my youngest child has scooted off to kindergarten, and I have started working five days a week, 9am-230pm. As a…
I have been reading an article in Poets & Writers about current writers (and book sellers) in Egypt. (Yes, I am a couple months behind on my trade reading.) With the continuing upheaval (think Arab Spring and then lots more) in the country, it is precarious to be a writer or to be selling modern…
Basically, I was away from my life and from my work from mid-June to mid-August. That means that July was not a month for a lot of progress on books or book sales, and yet there were some things happening. I had one guest appearance on a blog while I was away and, by the…
“A Doll’s House,” by Henrik Ibsen (1879), read from Oxford World’s Classics Henrik Ibsen: Four Major Plays (1981), transl. by James McFarlane and Jens Arup. Also, “Ghosts” (1881), “Hedda Gabler” (1890), and “The Master Builder” (1892). I can’t say that I enjoyed these plays too much. Ibsen and I diverge too much in our basic…
Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem, the National Bestseller published in 2003 by Vintage Books. In 2003, I was no longer in college, nor was I writing full time yet. In fact, I was working as a receptionist at an inner city junior high, crying on my drive home, recuperating in the evenings listening to…
One of the things I have learned about writing while writing is that it often takes writing to learn about writing. Make sense? You know, I like to read about writing, everything from plotting journals to autobiographies of writers (and magazines, oodles of magazines). But in some ways, there is nothing like writing, and then…
Yes, yes. I am overseas helping orphans. And yet here I am, giving you a June media synopsis. Chalk it up to the amazing power of scheduling blog entries. Or the universality of the internet. Which one is it? You may never know… Nothing going on this month much with Benevolent. I have won a…
Dustbin Baby, by Jacqueline Wilson–ahem, Dame Jacqueline Wilson–published in the UK in 2001 by Random House/Doubleday. Or at least that was where it started. I had a week before me, during which I was planning and packing for a very big trip, two thick books lined up in the queue (which would be the wooden…
Le Pere Goriot, also known as Old Man Goriot, Old Goriot, or Father Goriot, written by Honore de Balzac within his Human Comedy series, and read in the new 2011 translation by Penguin Classics. Originally published in 1834-1835 (serialized). Well, this was the first book in my reading series that was just a quiet, non-difficult…
I think the first thing I need to define here is my idea of art. Now, there are whole books and classes and even lives dedicated to this topic, as well as ever-shifting popular and specialist opinions. I know. (I took a couple classes in college on aesthetics, as well as art appreciation, and the…
Sybil, or The Two Nations, by Benjamin Disraeli. First published in 1845. The first thing I need to say about this book is about the particular edition that I read (pictured left), not about the book itself. But very quickly (I’m on the fourth book of my 1000-plus) I have learned another lesson. And here…
Whew! Let me just ask: how many times a day do you check your email? Your Twitter? Your blog stats? Your Linked In? Your Amazon rankings? Don’t have Amazon rankings? Thank goodness. Because it’s just another thing to be obsessed about checking. I didn’t think I would circle around my internet activity nearly as much…
the starving artist 