Category: books
-
Book of the Day!
Can’t wait to dive into this one! Beautiful day, great coffee, great author. Loved #deadwake and have read several books on #churchill already. #amreading #teacherlife #summerreading #readingteacher #communitycoffee #ErikLarsonfanclub
-
Book Review: The Lost for Words Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
You know that feeling when you have a bug bite that has scabbed over and you pick at it and pick at it and make it bleed even though it is hurting and you know that you are making it hurt? That’s sort of the feeling I had while reading Stephanie Butland’s novel The Lost…
-
Check it out!
Check out this month’s Washington Family Magazine for my freelance work in their August issue: Armchair Traveler: Books That Let You Travel the World (Without Leaving Home) Flying to Infinity and Beyond: Meet the 11-Year-Old Boy who Became an Instant Indoor Skydiving Star
-
Iron-Gray Magnolia
William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily” has always intrigued me. When completing course work for my certification in secondary education, this somewhat dark tale of a Southern belle was part of the syllabus for a course on the short story as a type of fiction. Of the thirty short stories covered in that…
-
Travel for Beginners
I know almost nothing about soy sauce. I know I like to dip my sushi rolls into it and I know that the colored tops of the soy sauce bottles on the tables in Asian restaurants denote whether the soy sauce is regular (red) or low sodium (green). I know it is one of the…
-
The White Hills of Rockville
Author’s Note: Some of my more liberal-minded readers might not agree with my positions in this essay, and that’s okay. Read or don’t read, the choice is yours, these views are mine. In the words of General Douglas MacArthur: “Last, but by no means least, courage-moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to…
-
The Adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It’s halfway through the second quarter of the school year and I’ve finally reached my favorite part of 8th grade literature, the beginning of an extended unit on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. First we read his short story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, which serves as a warm-up to third quarter when we take…
-
The Second Mrs. de Winter: Not Your Mama’s Cinderella
Despite what Walt Disney’s mega-marketing machine would have you believe, he did not create Cinderella. The story may have originated as early as 7 BC, but its European roots date from the mid 1600’s. The basic story line does not vary much: the prince or other wealthy man saves the poor orphaned girl from a…
-
A Love Letter to Laurie Colwin
Everyone has a list of people, either alive or deceased, that they would love to have dinner with. I’m sure there is a BuzzFeed list of the top candidates for those lists, chock-full of celebrities and famous people. For me, however, at the top of my list, is Laurie Colwin. Born and raised in Manhattan,…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 