Monday, February 11, 2013

Well, every few months, I return to this blog, though I vow that it's going to happen more often from here on out.

We've been snowed in for days now, and I've been quilting and writing up a storm (ha.). A friend is helping me to take some images so that I can finally post more quilts -- oh la la! -- so the next time I'm here, I'll do that. For now, here is the campus in the snow, with a dog in the foreground:




Alternating between delighting in the snow, making things, and feeling some cabin-fever, I've also been reading a lot. I finished The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, which was an appropriate read. I was grateful that I wasn't living in snowbound Alaska pre-internet-and-telephone. Now that's some cabin fever. But the landscape sounds so beautiful, I'd love to visit someday. This was a first novel, which makes me happy. A great start out of the gate -- lyrical language, a little magic.  Cozy winter snowy read.

This is what NPR had to say about it (a good review):


http://www.npr.org/2012/12/26/167557065/revisiting-a-sad-yet-hopeful-winters-tale-in-the-snow-child



I'm also now reading The Chronology of Water, and have recently finished Autobiography of a Face. That last one knocked me out, the story was so powerful (why hadn't I read it sooner??). AND, Dawn Raffel came to visit this week, so we read and discussed her work in a class I'm taking. I love, love, The Secret Life of Objects and her gorgeous story collection, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe.





http://www.thefastertimes.com/writersonwriting/2012/06/06/nothing-in-my-interior-life-is-linear-dawn-raffel/

That's an interesting interview, above.

Now I must move on to her novel and first collection. It was fantastic to have her here at URI, talking about how her work moves and becomes.