RAE’S READS

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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.”

  • MONDAY MORNING MUSINGS

    Recently I have been reading some good poetry on poet’s blogs.  I have been following unbolt, aspiringwriter22, A Scribe to Describe, Annette Rochelle Aben, A Little Me, Apparently, and several others.  This has brought me to thoughts and musings about poetry in general, the rhythm of poetry, specifically.

    Rhythm is what makes poetry catchy.  It is the entire movement, flow, the recurring stressed and unstressed pattern of syllables.  The rhythm of poetry reflects the rhythm in all of life–the pull of the moon on the tides, the pulse and beat of circulation, the change and sequence of the seasons.  Rhythm involves stress, timing, pace, pitch, tone, diction, and the total meaning of the poem.  However, rhythm in poetry does not solely come from the physical elements employed.  Poetry is infused with appeals to the unconscious, the connotative shadings that affect and are affected by rhythm.  The nervousness, tension, and energy in a poem come from its rhythm.

    Our expertise in the spoken English language is basically iambic, but much of our memorable speech depends on strong stresses, irregularity of rhythms or “sprung rhythms.”  Some cherished poetry has heavily pronounced, strongly stressed rhythms.  It is written to be sung or danced.

    I am just beginning to feel the rhythms of classical music this morning and think I will go through my folder of “Poems to Be Shared” as I listen.  Maybe I will think more about poetry and its rhythms later today as I go about my housework and schoolwork.

    And that is what I’m musing on this Monday morning.

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    This will be brief because I have spent the day finishing grading final papers and starting averaging grades for the semester.  Wednesday of this week will be the last time I see this particular group/class of students.  I have become very attached to them and am glad to report that all are doing well.

    What I Am Reading:  Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke, which is the first book in his trilogy about the Holland family.  This first book starts during WWII and I am currently in River Oaks, Houston, in the 50’s.  Two buddies from the war have gone into the oil business, one’s wife is a big Hollywood actress and the other’s is being investigated as a Communist during the 50’s Red Scare/Witch Hunts that took place.  Life isn’t easy.

    Conor Kelly and the Four Treasures of Eirean which takes place 4,000 years ago and is my first step into studying/reading Irish/Gaelic mythology.  It is also the first book I am reading on my new Kindle app on my laptop.

    Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, which I don’t fully understand but am enjoying a great deal for the wonderful writing, and I’m already planning to read it again when I finish, maybe during Spring Break when it will seem like a brand new book.

    The Arthritis Cure by Theodoakis, Adderly, and Fox, which was a totally new concept when published in 1997 (treatment via Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate) which I intend to discuss with my family doctor next week when I see her.  I am in need of relief from osteoarthritis.  (It could be much worse, rheumatoid arthritis, so I feel blessed in spite of the constant pain.)

    What I Watched Last week:  Lots of mindless TV for frequent breaks from paper grading and to rest up–My favorites so far are the following: “Timeless,” where I went to the Alamo and was involved in Watergate in two different episodes; “Gray’s Anatomy”, the medical soap opera I think I’ll never give up on; “This Is Us”–It looked good so I taped it.  I have watched three episodes and am so glad I have followed it, excellent acting; “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” which can be summed up in one word–delightful!

    I have also started Christmas baking and decorating the house just for the two of us.  Pretty soon I will start in on Christmas cards and letters, for some early birds of our acquaintance send theirs out Thanksgiving weekend–no kidding. I refuse to send ANY until December first. I will probably be sending the last around December 23rd.

    I am opening my unfinished, in-progress- house to any PWR members who want to get in out of the shopping hustle and bustle for a few minutes, put their feet up on my sea chest (coffee table substitute) and drink coffee and take a few deep breaths. Mi casa est su casa!

  • FRIDAY EARLY HOURS

    Sated–with food, with fellowship, with parades and sale ads, with reading, with thinking–that’s the kind of day Thanksgiving Day tends to be. And now “they” expect us to shift gears and think about Christmas!

    I am going to refuse and be a holdout.  I am going to leave my fabric turkeys and pumpkins on the mantel and on the hearth and use the fall-leaf runner and pumpkin/flower/fruit centerpiece on my green tablecloth with orange candles gracing the table instead of changing the runner and centerpiece on the green table cloth to Christmas trees and holly berries!  I entertained far more than usual from September 26 to Thanksgiving, so again I will holdout and refuse to entertain during the Christmas season except for tea or coffee for two or three at a time. I have a new teapot and saucer/bowls set for tea and snacks and  four kinds of coffee (thank you  Kurig for the best invention since sliced bread).  I will offer my friends refuge from the end of school and shopping madness in my living room as they put their feet up on my sea chest (large coffee table substitute) and sip peppermint tea and eat assorted easy-but-looks-like-you-fussed cookies.  Everyone who leaves my sanctuary will leave with a bag of homemade candy.  I may even glue a pinecone or ribbon on the plastic bag.

    Here I said I was going to be a holdout on celebrating Christmas, and where is my mind wandering to now?  Hmmmm.  Guess it’s inevitable.

  • Tuesday Teaser

    The game is played by opening what you are currently reading and copying two sentences(or a paragraph) and sending it as a comment to PWR.  NO SPOILERS PLEASE.

    Here is my Tuesday Teaser from Ali Smith’s How to Be Both.  There are no chapters, no paragraphs, no sections or headings.  In that respect, it is a unique book. Right now, we are in Renaissance Italy with a talented young fresco painter who is a girl disguised as a boy, and who has been hired to paint a section of a mural.

    “…there had been murmurings among the assistants and workshop painters that they were being refused money precisely cause I hadn’t signed, hadn’t asked for more, with them the names they had asked before… (she had been asked to sign a petition asking for more money for the artists’ assistants group) …We need to be paid.  And the more of us asking the better.”

       

     

  • SUNDAY (EVENING) POST

    Exhaustion is my new middle name.  I was so busy today having phone visits for my birthday (which isn’t until tomorrow) that I forgot my “grandson” was going to help me load a book onto my computer.  Now, neighbor, that’s too busy.

    My birthday weekend started Friday with a card from my book buddy/husband’s cousin who included a check for $26.00, just the exact price to buy myself a hard back book of my choice.  What a thoughtful gift!  In the same day’s mail, a former student sent me a card, a postcard for my collection from Boston which she recently visited, and a tote with a map of the “original” city of Boston.  It even is waterproofed and snaps shut.  My husband of 52 years led our Sunday School class in singing Happy Birthday to me and two others who have birthdays this week, and I especially liked the “And many mo ore…” they added to the end of the song.  There were several cards and special gifts from friends some of whom I’ve known for 30 or more years. My dear husband made a trip to Kroger’s (a gift in itself) to do the weekly shopping, and he brought home my favorite cake–white cake with white coconut frosting–which we had for supper along with a huge glass of milk.  There’s enough cake for breakfast and several times tomorrow, the actual birthday, and half a cake left to freeze.

    All of a sudden I feel “loved and adored” which was the “angel message” a popular blogger posted on her blog today.  I also feel blessed, beyond compare or deserving.  Thanks to everyone who has already started my BD rolling.  It is not eight o’clock, and I think I’ll read until (early) bedtime!

    God bless.

  • A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by Amor Towles: A Review

    The gentleman of the title is Count Alexander Rostov who was 30 years old when placed under house arrest in 1922.  His crime was being an “unrepentant aristocrat” and his place of incarceration was the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.  Rostov spent from 1922 until the mid-fifties as a political prisoner, confined to a small attic room in the hotel. During his arrest, he observed from his dormer window, “…some of the most turbulent decades in Russian history” as it unfolded outside the hotel.

    His story is sometimes tedious , oftentimes humorous–a story of friendships.  His friendships, first as a patron of the hotel, later as a waiter ,involved a Russian actress, a shrewd Kremlin official, a temperamental chef, and most importantly, a young girl, Nina, daughter of another government officer.  It is years later that Nina returns to her old friend and deposits in his care her young daughter, Sophia. Rostov raises Sophia as his daughter within the world of the hotel, and she comes to love him and call him “Papa.”

    The book is beautifully written, has excellent characterization, and enough intrigue and danger to keep any reader turning the pages. Most of all, The Count wants to be a “man of purpose,” something one would doubt could be accomplished from a tiny room at the top of a building, but something that Rostov accomplishes in spades. Instead of regretting his restricted life, The Count lives his life to the fullest, considering himself and being considered by others as “the luckiest man in the world.”

    The book is a novel, but it is written so well, the reader would swear it was “fiction based on fact.” It is the best book I have read during 2016. I plan to read Rules of Civility, a prior novel by Towles and anything else he has written.

  • Monday Morning Musings

    Instead of doing escape reading this past week, I have been watching escape (or “mindless”, as I refer to it) TV.  And, you know, it’s not so bad.  I gave up on The Good Life when the plot became rather outrageous and the jokes a bit offensive, but several other series have caught my fancy, and fortunately, when they first premiered this season, I had the foresight to set them to “record series.”

    Timeless, a time travel series, is one I really like.  My Cultural Historian friend would be appalled and spend the whole viewing time picking out inaccuracies, but I find the adventures suspenseful and the subplots that carry over from episode to episode engaging. What WOULD happen if we travelled back in time and changed some tiny detail?

    Designated Survivor is also turning out to be a “bring you back next week” experience and has some of the best acting so far. Also, Speechless, a timely show about a family dealing with a severely disabled member, has some fine comedy actors as well.

    Series I have followed since their inception include The big Bang Theory, Gray’s Anatomy and Scorpion.  The Big Bang always makes me laugh, and I have followed those lovable geniuses/nerds from high schoolers to responsible (?) adults.   Gray’s Anatomy has seen many changes over the thirteen or so years I have faithfully watched it, but new, interesting characters and new, interesting plots keep arriving.  The medical cases and miracles are not of as much interest to me as the interactions and relationships of the characters.  The writer is a genius and writes herself into corners only to get out of them in ways that have you saying, “I never saw that one coming!”   Scorpion is guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat all hour, shouting, “Oh no!” at the TV, and “action packed”? The show invented the term.

    Obviously, I have done very little reading this past week, except for the lovely Gentleman in Moscow, which I am drawing out to make it “last longer.” I did get about 2/3 into an insipid romance novel (Why I ever started it is a valid question) that showed up in my LFL which I thought I would like, and I finally put it back in the LFL for someone who will like it more.

    Since I will be grading final papers starting Wednesday, I doubt I’ll do much other reading, so maybe I’ll watch more episodes of mindless TV until being ready to make a big stab at my TBR stack of books over Thanksgiving Holiday.

    Happy reading (or watching, as the case may be).

     

     

  • Sunday (Evening) Post

    What I enjoyed this past week: Visiting with friends as I borrowed a coffee pot and card tables and chairs in preparation for yesterday’s brunch.  Having coffee and forgotten cookies (70’s recipe to go with the 60’s percolator coffee pot) with my class  Wednesday as they let their rough drafts for final papers “percolate” in their subconscious for a week and used the first hour of class to peer critique each other’s rough drafts. A necessities shopping trip Saturday with a big enough investment to call it my birthday present. And, the AAUW November brunch, here, Saturday.

    The first people arrived at 9:30 and helped set up.  I provided turkey and dressing casserole, and another friend brought sweet potatoes and cranberry/orange relish.  A third friend brought a lovely veggie tray with dip and a fruit plate.  Cookies from Aldi’s (think Sam’s Club) was the assortment accompanied by four kinds of coffee and made a nice, light dessert.  Afterwards, we packed toiletries overnight kits for the Women’s Shelter and although I do not know what the “count” was, it took three shopping bags and two large plastic bags to carry all the “kits” to the delivery lady’s car. The last two guests who were “catching up” did not leave until nearly three, providing a “cool-down” for me. Sunday School this morning put last week in perspective and gave me hope for the week ahead.

    What I am looking forward to this coming week: Finishing A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, and hopefully reviewing it as well. The tree man coming to remove a pear tree that has never produced a single pear and has lovely blossoms that I am sure are a nuisance to both back and side neighbors’ pools, and the same tree man  trimming the broken branches of the Mungo Pines in the front yard.  I spent a good forty minutes this afternoon harvesting the mini-pinecones and some pieces of greenery before the tree men take the broken limbs away. I will be the most popular supplier of pinecones for the coming Thanksgiving table turkeys and for the Christmas brandy snifters filled with mini-pinecones for the upcoming Christmas season.  A birthday coffee for a girlfriend who will be 82 and who deserves a fete in her honor.  It will be a small group–seven counting me–but the house is already clean, so why not kill two birds with one cleaning? Class Wednesday where final papers will be turned in and some time after the students leave, I’ll remain to get a head start on grading them. A friend’s retirement party as head librarian at the local library, and since our Third Tuesday book club has already given her a party, I don’t have to bake or bring anything!

    It promises to be a good week!

  • NOAH WEBSTER AND HIS WORDS: Instructional and Delightful Children’s Book

    This interesting biography of Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, was written by Jeri Chase Ferris and illustrated masterfully by Vincent X. Kirsch. It was published by Houghton Mifflin Books in 2012.

    Noah Webster wanted most of all for Americans to speak, write, and spell like Americans, not Englishmen, so the standardizing of American English was his life’s work. At the time he began to work on his “blue back speller,” the first AMERICAN textbook, words had no conformity of spelling from region to region.  For example, “mosquito” was spelled “mosquito”, miscitoe”, “mosquitor”, “musketeer”, or as Webster bemoaned, “…spelled 10 different ways in 10 different parts of the country.” Webster also included such American Indian words as “tomahawk”, native to America.  Finally in 1828 after a trip to the continent to discover etymologies of words, Webster published his “DIC-TION-AR-Y [noun: a book listing words in ABC order, telling what they mean and how to spell them].”

    This delightful technique is used for all “big” words a youngster may be unfamiliar with. For example: “U-NITE [verb: make one]” and “The books SOARED [verb: flew off] the shelves.” is instructional, but fun too!

    The book briefly notes the influence Noah Webster had on the United States, presented on a child’s level, and includes a wonderfully illustrated timeline in the back, “Noah Webster and the New United States”.

    This was a delightful read for me, especially thanks to the illustrations, and I just wish I had a grandchild to share it with!

  • The Thoughtful Dresser: A Review

    This is a 2009 publication by Linda Grant that, like classic clothes, will never go out of style.  It is a history of clothes, as well as “…a thinking woman’s guide on what to wear.” It deals with such concepts as “how we dress defines who we are…” in a sometimes humorous, sometimes serious manner.

    The first chapter, “In Which a Woman Buys a Pair of Shoes” immediately draws the reader’s interest (What woman isn’t interested in shoes?), and the fifth chapter which struggles and attempts to define “sexy” when it comes to clothes continues to keep us turning pages.  Ms. Grant, who writes for Vogue, among other things (such as being a prize winning novelist and journalist) deals with “The art of adornment, the pleasures of shopping, and why clothes matter” in a most engaging way.

    Catherine Hill appears three times in the book as a holocaust survivor whose hat saves her from the gas chamber, a fashion designer in Canada, and an ageless fashionista who is interviewed several times by the author.  She, according to the author, “IS fashion” and is “great reading” for this reviewer.

    Linda Grant views clothes as “the most intimate but public expression of our identity,” a topic I’ve never considered,and in doing so has become an author I want to read more of.