Blog Blog Woof Woof

What am I missing? At some point Tara and I talked about important books and she mentioned Prayer for Owen Meany. I started to read it, got about 50 pages and was done. I didn't care about anything or anybody in the book. Several months later I tried again. I struggled with those first 50 or so again but once I made it past that I sailed through the book but at the end I still didn't care. Throughout the reading of it people would comment on how great it was and how much they enjoyed it. All I wanted to know was, how and when Owen was gonna die. I was looking at Zen Habits' discussion of high impact books and several commentors have mentioned Owen Meany as a book that had a profound impact. Maybe if I had been at a spiritual crossroads or less sure about my spiritual state, maybe if I had been younger. I don't know but it just didn't mean much for me. The books on my list (closer to chronological than anything): The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein) I actually remem...

William Styron died ( NYT , you might have to subscribe) the other day. When I was a freshman at Sewanee I had a lot of trouble with writing (I blame this on my high school but that's another story). I had the same professor for both English 101 & 102 .She seemed convinced that I could write I just hadn't been given the skills. After the first couple or three writing assignments she had me in her office weekly were we would go over what I had done correctly and what I had done incorrectly. She was an extremely patient woman and I was a willing student, I mean, I never really thought about. The teacher says "come see me", you go, right? At Sewanee, English 101 was poetry + The Sound & The Fury by Faulkner ; English 102 was Shakespeare plays. My professor, whose name I can't remember, suggested we continue working together in ENG 102, our weekly meetings continued and improvements became apparent and consistent. By the end of the semester I was making B...