RAE’S READS

recent posts

about

This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books. Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish. This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”

THIRSDAY THOUGHTS

I know I overuse the word “lovely,” but Wintering:The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is a lovely book. Even the cover gives the reader a sense of peace and serenity.

One of the most helpful, most inspiring books I read in 2021

Published in 2020, May’s book fills a need in the human psyche. I for one suffer from SAD, seasonal affective disorder in the winter. The bleakness of the clouded skies and leafless trees depress me. Just looking out the kitchen window can immobilize me into standing there motionless, doing nothing for fifteen minutes or more. This cannot be a healthy mental state.

Wintering takes us through the seasons of the year, starting in September with the prologue, and continuing through late March with an epilogue. This beautiful, healing book looks at the winter season as a time of rest and healing. “…wintering cannot be avoided, but need not be feared.” Winter season is compared to “a warm blanket on a cold day.” We are instructed to use this time to “care for and repair our selves when life knocks us down.” The author gives personal examples from her life in a memoir-like musing on the winter season. We find that she underwent adversity and discover how she (not avoided it, but) worked through it.

This simple, little book leads us to understand that the “transformative power of rest and retreat” convinces us that “life is cyclical, not linear.”I am in the winter season of the cycle now; this year I will not “rush” the coming of spring, but prepare myself and heal myself from life’s blows in preparation for it.

I highly recommend this book.

This was one of the last books I finished in 2021.
Posted in

2 responses to “THIRSDAY THOUGHTS”

  1. Carla Avatar
    Carla

    I think I need to read this book, Rae. That is why I travel to Florida in the winter. I get very depressed and do almost nothing when I am home. I get here and the sun and warmth rejuvenate me. Very interesting ideas about taking that time, I am off to look for this one. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. Deb Nance at Readerbuzz Avatar
    Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

    I don’t know how people who like in snowy winter do it.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to Deb Nance at Readerbuzz Cancel reply