Monthly Archives: August 2016

Yarn Along

Once again I haven’t made a ton of progress on either my book or my cowl this week. But after several busy weeks in a row I’ll have almost two weeks of a very light workload, and I’m excited about … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized, Yarn Along | 2 Comments

A Review of Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre

I’ve owned this book for years, and now that I’ve finally read it I feel a little creeped out having lived so long in the presence of such a strange, alarming little book. It’s a good book – a very … Continue reading

Posted in Albinos, Non-Evil, Authors, Erskine Caldwell, Fiction - general, Fiction - literary, Reviews by Bethany, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Yarn Along

The title of Kia Corthron’s book doesn’t make any more sense than it did last week at this time, though to be fair, I haven’t gotten much reading done. I’ve read enough to know that the book is really intriguing … Continue reading

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A Review of Lesley Hazleton’s After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam

I’ve been interested in the ancient and medieval Middle East for a long time – since I was a teenager, really, but this current flurry of reading on the subject dates back to my reading of The House of Wisdom … Continue reading

Posted in Authors, Lesley Hazleton, Non-fiction - History, Nonfiction - General, Nonfiction - Military, Nonfiction - Religion, Reviews by Bethany, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Review of Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars

Two of my tutoring clients were assigned this book for summer reading, so of course it ended up on my reading list as well. If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you may have noticed that I have … Continue reading

Posted in Authors, Fiction - Children's, Fiction - general, Fiction - Historical, Fiction - Important Award Winners, Fiction - Young Adult, Lois Lowry, Reviews by Bethany, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

A Review of Larry Watson’s Justice

I loved this book – probably more than any other book I’ve read this year. This is one of those collections of linked stories that masquerade as a novel. I actually like it better when I think of its chapters as … Continue reading

Posted in Authors, Fiction - general, Fiction - literary, Fiction - short story collections, Larry Watson, Reviews by Bethany, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Yarn Along

I haven’t made too much progress on my Game of Thrones cowl since last week, but I’m still enjoying it. I’m about 30 pages into The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter and am enjoying it, but I’m a little annoyed … Continue reading

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Thoughts on the Silliness of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and the Pleasures of Seeing It Anyway

Back in grad school I was part of a short-lived Shakespeare reading group. Four or five of us met on weekend mornings to read all or part of a Shakespeare play. We started working through the plays in alphabetical order, … Continue reading

Posted in Authors, Drama, Glimpses into Real Life, Reviews by Bethany, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | Leave a comment

Why Don’t I Know More About Italy? – And Other Thoughts (Actually Not That Many Other Thoughts) on Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero

When I was preparing to write this review, I realized that I needed a really good metaphor to describe what it feels like to read a work of social satire from a culture one doesn’t know well. The closest I … Continue reading

Posted in Authors, Fiction - general, Fiction - literary, Reviews by Bethany, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Yarn Along

When I started this project, I called it my Game of Thrones cowl, partly because I was watching Game of Thrones while I worked on it but mostly because of the storminess of its color scheme. It’s exactly the color … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized, Yarn Along | 4 Comments