Speak Laurie Halse Anderson Original copyright 1999 This edition: Penguin Platinum, 2006, Paperback (ISBN 0142407321 / 9780142407325) Fiction (YA), 197 pages Source: Purchased/personal copy Reason for Reading: Banned Books Week 2010 Opening Lines: “It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache.” Book description: Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people […]
“Goldilocks planet” illustration by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation. Weekend Assignment # 338: A World of Their Own Even as astronomers discover planets that may be capable of supporting life, such destinations remain out of reach of would-be human colonists, even if the world is “only” twenty light years away. But if some science fictional technology were discovered in the next year or two (warp drive, matter transmission or whatever) that made it possible to […]
This Friday, October 8, it will be eleven years since my mom, Mary Ann, passed away. A resident of St. Petersburg, Florida for 22 years, she was 69 years old at the time of her death. She was survived by her husband, two adult daughters, and one teenage grandson. We’re left to remember. But our family had lost her well before that. For over seven years, she had been living in a nursing home, incapacitated […]
I don’t have a theme for this Sunday’s Salon – I’m a bit random this week. HELD OVER – Banned Books Week: After reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, I’ve decided to stretch out Banned Books Week a little longer and pull out two books I’d set aside for my failed Shelf Discovery Challenge. Forever… by Judy Blume and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle are very different from each other, but they’ve both been […]
When I think of “songs I never need to hear again,” I don’t necessarily mean songs I absolutely can’t stand. I do my best to avoid hearing those already, unless they happen to be on my husband’s playlists (I am in the car listening to you under duress, “A Horse With No Name”). There are other songs that I don’t actively despise, but in close to 35 years of paying attention to music, I have […]
