READ ALL ABOUT IT
Since 2012, I’ve been writing about books. And the act of reading. And the importance of story and narrative. But, mostly, the underlying theme of all I write is how taking a moment to stop and digest some longform text — instead of scrolling, instead of watching a video, instead of multitasking — can be one of the most grounding things we can do for ourselves. Here’s the one-stop online home for all this writing.
You can read more about me and my work by moseying over here. Want to peruse periodic “essay drops” — excerpts from my work-in-progress essay collection about Homesickness? Here ya go.
The House Shelters Daydreaming
Here’s a text I received from my dad the other day. My parents are in the middle of a road trip to Northern California — a bit of a John Steinbeck pilgrimage. But they first travelled due west and stopped in Los Angeles, they city they moved to after they were married and also the city where I was born. They lived in a few rentals here and there before purchasing their first home, pictured. Yet I imagine each of the homes leading up to this house on stilts held daydreams…because daydreams don’t require ownership, just an imagination.
Measuring the Wrong Things: Machine Learning, Human, Learning, and AI
What do you think? This morning, my husband sent me this article that posits that “male characters are four more times more prevalent in literature than female characters.” (As an aside, Matt’s commentary with the link was “Ironic since men don’t read books.” He’s being funny. But let’s for sure save space for a post about how reading is seen as a “women’s activity” for another day!)
Passage West
While we were living in Ireland, I met a Taiwanese-American woman who was married to an Irish man. She had grown up some in Taiwan, but mostly in California and when she realized that I was also originally from the West Coast said something along the lines of, “People are different on the West Coast. It’s the whole ‘pioneering spirit’ that has evolved into innovation.”
Tell Me a Story
My son is nine years old and in the equivalent of fourth grade, an age when pupils have one main classroom (or “form,” as his school calls it) teacher save for specials such as science, PE, and art. We’ve been very pleased with this teacher, and one of her exemplary qualities is that she is attempting to teach her charges how to write well. Yes, they try their hands at “creative writing” and learn about different forms of poetry and prose, but most importantly, she is demonstrating how to – and demanding that the children do so, in the way only a good teacher can – “uplevel” their writing. She’s provided them with their own little booklet of mechanical writing tips and suggestions – much like the one I got from the most influential teacher I’ve ever had, although I didn’t learn any of these tricks of the trade in a formalized fashion until high school. (Nonetheless, thank you, Sr. O’Dea!) However, part of learning how to write well is also learning how to read well, which is why I loved looking in my son’s homework folder earlier this year and seeing his notes about context clues and how to interpret an author’s intent via the structure of his or her writing. And, despite not being a huge fan of fiction, he’s learning what makes a story, well, good. (What I’m waiting for is his chance meeting with a piece of fiction that will enchant him and make him want to curl up with a book and jump inside its pages. But I suppose I have to accept that not everyone enjoys this. Le Sigh!)
