Cari Noga's Blog

ids Kove was the first public place we took our son after our axis-altering first week of parenthood. I still remember how unseasonably hot that first week of October 2005 was, the sweltering temperature incongruent with the changing fall light and ever-earlier dusks. And how relieved I was to have Kids Kove as a destination, [...]

Twelve years ago today, I felt poor. On April 15, 2003, my then-fiance and I closed on our home. Like today, of course, it was also tax day. Self-employed at the time, my first-quarter estimated tax was due that day, too. As we climbed into sleeping bags in our empty new living room that night, [...]

That’s one of the most original questions I answer this week on Fine Print, the blog of the Traverse Area District Library. Thanks for inviting me to your space, TADL! I’m looking forward to joining you on April 28 at the Filling Station for Books & Brewskis. (Anyone else interested, TADL just happens to have some copies available.) [...]

Sparrow Migrations has a new cover and pub date for the re-release by Lake Union Publishing. Get the new edition, in paperback or Kindle version, on June 23!

each read – n. “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged but not so serious it will spoil your holiday.” (See list) Nirvana, right? Well, even in the depths of January, I discovered that beach read state can be achieved. On cross-country skis, of all things. A [...]

My local library has started a new category on its blog, #toread. Here’s mine: From the bottom up, here’s why these titles wound up with me: Both The Dyslexia Empowerment Plan and A Land We Can Share (subtitled Teaching Literacy to Students with Autism) were chosen so I can help my son’s reading improve. Rules [...]

eans and shirts with collars. A silent ceiling fan. An orange swim suit. As the new year gets fully underway this week, I fixate on what I’m interpreting as this trio of signals from my son, sent as 2014 waned. Like many autistic children, he is rigid about his routines. Also like many of his [...]

f one aspires to be a writer, one must first be a reader. Plain and simple. Below are the books I read in 2014. Looking at the list, it’s easy to see where some choices came from, and interesting to ruminate on other trends that only surface in the aggregate, and how they might eventually [...]

riving through town the other day with the kids, I spotted a wind turbine spinning far faster than I would have expected. It hadn’t felt particularly breezy when I’d picked them up on the school playground a few minutes earlier. Nor did I see any tree branches swaying. “That windmill’s spinning really fast,” I commented [...]

hen I visit book clubs or speak at an event or do signings for Sparrow Migrations, I usually bring along a bag of fortune cookies. All the novel’s characters eat at a Chinese restaurant at some point, and the fortune cookies are a great icebreaker, a reason to strike up a conversation. This month, fortune [...]