Canadian writer Helen Humphreys doesn't just love dogs; she loves a particular breed, rather rare, called a vizsla. They were originally bred in Hungary for hunting. In this autobiography, Humphreys gives the reader her life story, as well as stories about her dogs. Interspersed among her life stories are excerpts from her journal describing how training Fig is going. (Cue the puppy teeth!) As a bonus, Humphreys interweaves stories about other writers and their dogs: Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, E.B. White, James Thurber, and more. These are accompanied by black-and-white photos. The second bonus is her use of training a puppy (she got Fig after the death of another beloved vizsla) as a metaphor for writing. Chapter titles include Character, Structure, Setting, and Pacing. Regardless of readers' interest in dogs, there is something here for cat lovers as well!
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You are likely familiar with Tim Rice's lyric collaborations with musicians such as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John. However, he also collaborated with his wife to produce Eva Rice, a writer of fiction. I found her novel The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets to be a delight. From its opening pages it is clearly written by someone in England. I wish I could describe the sense of those words; even without the British spellings, it's clearly not from any other nation. Set in 1955, when wartime rationing had not yet fully ended, it tells the story of an innocent eighteen-year-old, still trying to write papers on Shakespeare, who is swept up by a more well-to-do and eccentric family of a mother with two young adults. Her own family includes a mother who was widowed by World War II and never recovered from her loss, as well as a younger brother who plays guitar and wants to be the next Elvis Presley. The interactions of these characters form the plot. |
What I’m ReadingI began working in libraries as a seventh grader, courtesy of scoliosis. My orthopedic surgeon wrote me a pass to miss gym class, so I began working in the school library to feed my love of reading. Even after my surgery to correct the curvature, I kept getting out of gym to work in my high school library and then in my college library (for pay, at last!).
So began my eventual career as a college reference librarian—after a detour into teaching high school English. Later I worked for an educational publisher before going back to libraries.
I have a reading and writing life now. I devour both fiction and nonfiction, and will tell you about some of my favorite reads, both old friends and new discoveries.
Here's some library-themed music to get you in the mood.
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