River Brown

I am hungry, again, to read, partly seeing the onset of summer, and partly just because I miss it.  I’m in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and finding the layers of comment on the religious life fascinating.  Having been somewhat cloistered myself in a fundamentalist community I am connecting with the monastic life and characters in Umberto’s book.  And vocabulary beyond a struggling second grader’s is refreshing.

Also on my night stand is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain which is my downtown women’s book club selection for June.  I’m hosting and will get to do a cuisine connection to the book.  Besides I think the salon era of Paris in the ’20’s is fascinating.

Another read I’m wading into, much less literary but daunting, is the K-5 Performance Assessments from Lucy Calkins new Common Core Units of Study.  Besides reading it, my writing task will be to take it down to a level my small school district can adopt.

It will be good to finish Good Prose: The art of nonfiction before the summer intensive institute begins.  The other night Kidder or Todd wrapped up a chapter with such a gem I wanted to pause and sleep in it and think about it during my days. It’s the end of the chapter titled “Art and Commerce and they’re quoting David Foster Wallace via his NY memorial.

“The novelist Zadie Smith quoted him as having said,”…the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose:  the agenda of the consciousness behind the text.  It’s got something to do with love.  With having th disciline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love, instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”

Any my co-director friend put a book in my hand when I left the planning meeting at her house.  I have loved every book Nancy has ever recommended.  This is Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.  

Quite a feast, especially for me not being a speed reader and one who is savoring the time spent with well crafted words, ideas, characters to follow into meaning and places to connect with myself having nothing to do with my day gig.