2017 Reading List

Posted by on Dec 26, 2016 in dish | 2 comments Earlier this month, I got into a testy professional conversation with an online colleague who was bemoaning how colleges/universities are no longer permitted to teach the dead white guy literary canon because diversity, or something equally stupid. It pissed me off. Not only is that claim patently untrue, but it also denigrates the many brilliant writers who don’t happen to be white males...
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Release Day!

Posted by on Sep 8, 2014 in dish | 0 comments Today’s the day. Today, although I’ve been writing forever, I can officially call myself an author. My debut novella, Fortune’s Fool, is on sale! To call my path to publication a long road is understating the point immensely. I’ve done the dance (and been abandoned on the floor) by several publishers along the way. I have an uncanny talent for writing exactly the right...
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I’ll Make Me a World

Posted by on Jan 24, 2013 in dish | 0 comments One of my father’s favorite books is James Weldon Johnson’s poetry collection God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. The whole collection is gorgeous, a tour-de-force of imagery, theology, and culture. Johnson is better known for “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” adopted by the NAACP as the “Negro National Anthem,” but Daddy’s favorite and...
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Newbery Project: 1920s

Posted by on Apr 13, 2012 in dish | 0 comments Some time back, I began a project to read all of the books that have been awarded the Newbery Medal. After scanning the list of winners, I realized that I’d only read a dozen or so of the books, the earliest of which was written in 1949 (Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind). So delving into the list at the beginning seemed a good way to tackle it. Unfortunately, a couple of...
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Odd Couplings, Book Version

Posted by on Jan 12, 2012 in dish | 0 comments This post at Bookriot is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. It’s a listing of the Top Ten Made-Up Literary Couples, with explanations of why the two belong together. With pairings like Jane Eyre/Rhett Butler, Katniss Everdeen/Aragorn, and Bella Swan/Lestat, how can you miss?   Reading a post like this makes you think of the possibilities. How about these?   Guy Montag and...
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