Literature I dedicated this month to Reading the Theatre, and though at first I thought I might read two or three books, it was so much fun I found it hard to stop. Of course, any time of year is great to read theatre-themed books, but an occasional binge seems to increase the fun for … Continue reading Month in Review: April 2022 (and Blog Break)
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963) Lately I seem to have been reading a lot of amazing memoirs by women, frequently dealing with psychological manipulation and coming out of a state of subjugation or abuse. (Tara Westover's Educated being the most recent example -- and it turned out … Continue reading Beautiful Books: Two psychological masterpieces
James Lapine, Putting It Together (2021) I think that putting on a theatrical production, particularly a musical, is one of the most remarkable things we human beings can do. It requires an almost unequalled level of cooperation and working together, with manifold roles that each have to be precisely and skillfully done while serving the … Continue reading Reading the Theatre review: Putting It Together
The one word I chose to contemplate this year is CONNECT. So far I've been thinking about connecting with various things, shifting slightly from month to month. Last month I reflected on connecting with failure. That brought up memories of failures in communication, my own and others'. For me, connecting and communicating are so close … Continue reading #OneWord2022: Connecting and communicating
This month's Narniathon read, The Horse and His Boy, also counts serendipitously for the 1954 Club hosted by Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings. It's going to be interesting to see what else was published in this year (notably including The first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings, which Lewis played … Continue reading #Narniathon21 – The Boring One
The twice yearly "Reading clubs" hosted by Simon and Karen are a lot of fun. I'm going to be reviewing 1954's The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis shortly, since it was also this month's read for the Narniathon. But I found a couple of earlier reviews that I posted at The Emerald City … Continue reading #1954Club week begins
Some years ago I spent an Advent season studying the stories of people who were raised from the dead in the New Testament. All the healing stories raise so many questions for me -- I want to know more about the background of these special individuals, and what their experience might have been. I ended … Continue reading Talitha Koum: A Poem
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've had digestive problems and gastric headaches for a large portion of my life. I've tried various things but nothing has worked for long, and last year things escalated to the point where I had to have my gallbladder removed. My regular family doctor saw "malfunctioning gallbladder" as the cause of … Continue reading My functional medicine journey, Part I: Foundations
For this month's Throwback Thursday event, I'm linking back to one of my favorite reviews that hardly anyone seemed to notice on The Emerald City Book Review: my consideration of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, part of my Reading New England challenge year. Original 1938 production of Our Town This month, as I'm celebrating Reading the … Continue reading Throwback Thursday: Our Town
Literature A standout book that I did not review on the blog was What My Bones Know, a memoir by a survivor of Complex PTSD (or relational trauma, as I think it could be better described). Thanks so much to What's Nonfiction for pointing me to this powerful account of personal transformation. I also read … Continue reading Month in Review: March 2022
