With the publication of this entry, I’ll have completed my first year of blogging. It takes at least twelve months to build any credibility with these things and this is what I’ve learned so far: First, blogging requires steady work and commitment and I can’t predict who will stick to it. I knew about the commitment going in and I wasn’t sure if I could keep up with that. More than 150 columns l...
My sis and I fought over everything when we were kids. Books, records, pizza, you name it, both of us wanted the better, bigger share. We thought we’d grown out of most of that habit until we started discussing books to talk about on this blog. Barb insisted she wanted to write on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. I wasn’t willing to give that one to her. Mom & Dad, wherever you ...
My mother tried to raise kids who didn’t know fear. I think she must have experienced some very bad moments in her own childhood because she understood the nature of childhood terrors and did her best to keep me and my sister from everything scary. Our TV shows were monitored, our movie choices screened and Mom made sure that the books we read could never frighten or intimidate us. All of this careful planning ha...
It’s Halloween Season again and TV channels, movies, radio and much of the internet are paying tribute to this time by retelling the stories that entertain and scare us. The traditional cast of characters are all on display: witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, zombies and other deadundead players that make things go bump in the night. I like most of these but they don’t terrify me. Haunted homes come clo...
There’s nothing like cleaning up a seldom-used room for turning up forgotten photographs. A small pile of candid shots were dislodged as I was re-shelving some books and drifted toward the rug. My husband picked up this one and handed it back to me with a smile saying, “Is there a reason I never see you read while you’re sitting in a chair? No, there probably isnR...