Susan > Recent Status Updates

When Taisy lifts one of the Yorkies: "He was light as a lunch sack full of feathers"

This book includes an account of a Marie Dorion, who, 8 months pregnant, accompanied, with her husband, an expedition across the Rockies in the winter. AND she had two small children. I love reading about this sort of quiet bravery.

Finished reading the first novella, Afterimages. Love the beauty of the silent sentences. Also love the violent mime.

"She was as tiny and colorful as an appetizer." (Love that.)

Reading this for the Women's National Book Association panel I'm moderating on political writing.

"When the mass of British left India at Independence, they left behind them a great number of pianos..."

Love opening line of Kevin Leahy's story, "Remora, IL:" "We were desperate, it's true."

Tsar Nicholas, upon abdicating: "Now that I am about to be freed of my responsibilities to the nation, perhaps I can fulfill my life's desire--to have a farm, somewhere in England.

"One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year around," said Miss Marple placidly.

This book is like a thriller and a tragedy and an action statement. Powerful.

"All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great,hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life and to recognise the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization...

List of words meaning drunk: owled, jingled, boiled, sozzled, scrooched, ossified, embalmed and buried.

Fascinating non-fiction account of what the world was like when Fitzgerald was writing Great Gatsby. Especially like all the details about NY. There used to be traffic towers and policemen would sit in them and change the glass, red or green or yellow. But it wasn't agreed yet that green meant go. So there was a lot of discussion about what a green light meant.

One of the things I've learned from this book is that although Law and Order is entertaining, it's not an accurate depiction of criminal justice system.

"But the job of a teacher, most of all (I think0, is to know what others have written and what another must read, right now, this second, in the midst of the long journey. The job of a teacher is to share."

This book is transforming the way I think about the War on Drugs. So much money that might better have been spent on prevention and education and treatment.

From 1960-1990, crime rates in US, Finland and Germany were similar. But in that time period, US incarceration rate quadrupled, Finland fell 60 per cent and Germany stayed same.

This has one of the most shocking scenes I've read. Not that it's violent. Just so unexpected.

I meant that I've been underlining 'passages." But my general point is the same.

I've been underlining so many massages in this book. Most of it is useful for novelists as well, for example, the part about using present versus past tense.

This is an angry book. Not quite sure how to analyze it as a piece of scholarship when he's spitting bile the whole time. He uses the word "obviously" more than anyone I've read, but what he's saying isn't always so obvious.

"Like clog dancing, the art of analysing works of literature is almost dead on its feet."

She describes a scene from 1939 in which the King and Queen of England visited Hyde Park and upon leaving a crowd gathered round and sang to them Auld Lang Syne. Don't know why I find that so moving, except I can picture the scene so clearly.

Happened to be watching Dancing with the Stars on Monday night (blushing), with Cher, and they played a song from Mermaids, which is a movie based on Patty Dann's earlier novel. Well, I was excited.

Wonderful anecdote about how ER was at reception, had to shake 1,000 people's hands, felt so ill she saw black spots, went upstairs, lay down a few minutes, got back up and continued shaking hands and then drove to Maryland the next day. That's one tough woman.

“I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand”

"A story is time itself, boxed and compressed."

Love Sebold's description of Tess Gallagher's first poetry class: singing a ballad and saying, if she could do that, students could get there on time.

I never realized how anxious I was until I started reading this book.