Writing the good read
Cold weather makes me want a hot bowl of tomato soup. But sometimes I want something a little different. I saw a recipe a while back — I don’t remember in what magazine — for a tomato and artichoke soup and thought it sounded interesting. So I trotted off to the kitchen to play. I…
Today is the last day as the NAIWE Words Matter Blog Challenge. Todays topic: Words, like moths, are captured by writers who pin them to the page in various forms. What writer’s work most deftly captivates you? Why? Easy answer for me: Jane Austen, particularly Pride and Prejudice. I read it at least once a…
In what will probably be one of the shortest blog posts I ever do, let me first introduce today’s topic for the NAIEW Words Matter Blog Challenge: Words can be mangled, misused, or misunderstood. What is your funniest example of mangling, misuse, or misunderstanding? My funniest example of mangling words comes from the mouth of…
I have to admit that when I read today’s NAIEW Words Matter Blog Challenge topic, I had to go to may quote book and look for one. I don’t usually remember quotes, except from movies, a few books, and things my mother repeated over and over in my childhood. So I looked under some of…
Today’s blog topic is for the NAIEW Words Matter Blog Challenge is: What speech or document do you believe to be most important? This may sound high-falutin’ or fey, but the most important document is the internal one that guides our life. We all have an innate belief about ourselves that guides our life. It…
Today is the first day of the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors annual Words Matter blog challenge. Each day, bloggers write on a specific topic. Today’s topic: Is there a word that has changed, or could change your life? What is it, and what difference would it make? My answer: Cure. Maybe I’m…
I don’t usually view reading as a race to the finish, but t around mid-November, I looked at a stack of about 10 books next to my bed and determined I had to finish it before the end of the year so that I could start 2011 and the Autobiography of Mark Twain at the…
I love cassoulet, a French stew that traditionally includes beans, sausage, chicken or duck and pork. But the traditional variety includes ingredients I wouldn’t use in everyday cooking (like duck and other fatty cuts of meat) and can take a long time to make — days for some recipes. I saw one recipe on line…
Yesterday I wrote about some older dog books — all published more than 50 years ago. Today, four books published in the last couple of years, all non-fiction, all dealing with how pets fit into our world or their interior lives. Top of the pile — and I mean that literally, not in terms of…
I was shelving the books I wrote about in part I of my latest dog pile book reviews and I came upon a cornered page in the very back of my copy of My Dog Tulip by JR Ackerley. The quote says everything about what is wrong with the way dogs were so often kept…