Skip to main content
View Sidebar
Click on any book icon to see Table of Contents and/or to purchase a copy.
Books: Looking Back on the Last Couple of Years

Books: Looking Back on the Last Couple of Years

October 2, 2022

Hi WinkWorld Readers,

I have been reflecting on some of my reading in the last couple of years.  I am doing this for a specific group of readers, but thought I would share with you, too.

 

2019

For whatever reason, when COVID hit in the spring of 2019, I immediately started reading books about the future and the future of education.

2020

From there I went to something I know: Women and libraries. Many of these books were about a particular woman who saved (or tried to save) a library in Europe during WWII.

2021

When I tired of the brutality of the Nazis in those historical novels, I found William Kent Krueger, whom I had never read, and I still have not read his various series.  I heard him speak at the Tucson Festival of Books, and he explained his detailed outlines for his books in series.  He said that when it came time to actually write the books, they mostly wrote themselves, as he knew the outlines so well.  This is true for all except for Ordinary Grace  and This Tender Land, which he wrote without an outline.  He seemed very happy with his new more organic style of writing.  I loved these two novels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Krueger, I read  The Lincoln Highway by Towles, as it was a similar genre, young boys’ adventures and coming-of-age.
Two  great thriller novels followed with strong women heroines–just like in my WWII library books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhere during the 2 years of the pandemic, I also discovered the joy of fairy tales. Thank you, Kate DiCamillo and JK Rowling.

2022

Lately, I have rediscovered Mary Pipher–another heroine.  I even found most of my Piphers which I had  previously read–still searching for “Reviving Olphelia.”  Pipher’s most recent is “A Life in Light,” in which she talks about the impermanence of aging.  I am feeling it.

My latest/greatest is Little and Often by Trent Preszler, who spent some of his childhood living north of Faith, South Dakota on a ranch.  It is a true story of an estranged father/son, a tough ranching life, searching for identity, a bag of tools, and carving a canoe from a tree.  These hand-made canoes now sell as works-of-art on the East coast.  Prairie People, this one is for you.

2023 – I look forward to reading all of the Banned Books, but I just could not wait any longer, so I have already started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I see in the LA Times today that I am not the only one worried about book banning. I wish I could find our Captain Underpants books.

Here is a little piece on Captain Underpants which Dawn and I put together in the 3rd edition of Critical Pedagogy: Notes from the Real World.

You will need to scroll down a bit to “Captain Underpants to the Rescue.”

And, as another little treasure, here is Dawn’s latest Dewdrops in which she writing about running on our ranch.

October 2

The Road Less Traveled

 

 

 

Leave a reply