Bookpuddle

"In my last years as an editor I saw more and more stories and poems that amounted to a kind of literary MTV - they were sleek and shi...

My friend, she buys a fresh herd of ducklings every spring. The above photo is of this year’s batch of peepers! She raises them, like the go...

Middle age: the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel just as good as ever. -- Don Marquis (1878-1937) That...

The first [but not last] Great Bookpuddle Book Giveaway has come and gone! Several of you have taken a crack at it and have guessed the righ...

For those of you who are interested, please note the hint I have dropped at the end of last night's posting!

Hmmm... is that redundant? FREE book giveaway? What would the opposite be? OBLIGATORY book giveaway? OK, this is a CONTEST of sorts, wher...

There’s a line between love and fascination That’s hard to see on an evening such as this, For they both give the very same sensation Whe...

Sometimes I like to write short stories. No. Correction. I always like to write short stories. It’s just that I don’t always do it! ...

Have a great Thursday! *********

I find it more disappointing to read through a book of bad short stories than to endure a bad novel. I was thinking about this quite a bit t...

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with...

Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a gr...

This evening, during a lull in my Starbucks coffee-drinking, I am thinking of moments when I have been the recipient of Good Samaritanism. ...

"I am impressed when music matters, when genres are broken, when spirits are lifted, when people make a difference, and when people are...

Well, yesterday I did something that is so uncharacteristic of me that I still can’t even believe it happened. ← I bought cosmetics. Must...

For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, you will know that I live in coffee shops. I would say that 90% of my blogs are wri...

Art, it seems to me, should simplify finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the ...

I am just sitting here at Starbucks reading an excellent, wonderful book. It’s called Anil’s Ghost and it’s by Michael Ondaatje. I cannot ...

Part of teaching is helping students learn how to tolerate ambiguity, consider possibilities, and ask questions that are unanswerable. -- Sa...

Have a great Wednesday! *******