“Books know no limits or borders, they create longings and unexpected passions, they pose more questions than answers. They represent the unruly world, filled with contradictions and complications...” ― Azar Nafisi

OMG -- 10 teenagers in the house is LOUD! (Happy Birthday, Izzy!)

I'm looking forward to teaching Valerie Wilson Wesley's *When Death Comes Stealing* -- I'll be very curious what students think of it!

Day 1 of Nanowrimo!!!

“A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.” — Don DeLillo

“A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.” — Tim O'Brien

“Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.” — Doris Lessing

“There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.” — Haruki Murakami

Wow. I just got really stressed out reading *The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo* even though I totally know how it ends. Now THAT is good writing!

“Read poetry aloud and try to heighten in every way your sensitivity to the sound and rhythm and shape of sentences. The music of words.” — Janet Fitch

“Beware of advice — even this.” — Carl Sandburg

OMG -- how is it November 15??? I am NOT at 25,000 words of nano. Sigh.

*Project Hail Mary* is a fun book...and excellent for a discussion group!

“How easily we forget-we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.” ― Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway

“You can’t clobber any reader while he’s looking. You divert his attention, then you clobber him.” — Flannery O’Connor

I love a good "Day of Writing Dangerously" (nanowrimo)

Just started *Light From Uncommon Stars* -- magical (just like everyone says).

“In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.” — Lauren Groff

"I would suggest here that the history of philosophy after Newton could be thought of as a series of confrontations with the question of how to talk about falling." --Cathy Caruth

So yeah....Hugh MacLennan's *Two Solitudes* (1945) is much more interesting at age 50 than it was last time I read it (age 15). Makes me wonder about the pros and cons of having high school students read the classics. It probably shaped my thinking...but I missed a lot too!