What it is: Cry No More by Linda Howard is a mystery/romance novel centered on Milla Edge, a woman whose six-week-old baby was violently torn from her in a Mexican open-air market. She dedicatedly spends the next ten years trying to find her son, Justin, which is both dangerous and difficult due to the smugglers’ conniving tricks…
This photo from my archives is rare in that it follows the Rule of Thirds. Frankly, I tend to ignore the rule; while I value the idea behind it–that off-center compositions tend to be more interesting–I find grids too restrictive and calculated for my shooting style.
I recently spent two weeks on crutches after falling and badly bruising my femur. I’m in less pain now, but stairs are still difficult and I can’t bend my knee enough to sit in the back seat of a car. I’ll admit that I spent a lot of the first few days on crutches being frustrated…
In response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Symmetry.
What it is: The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo is a novel about Marjorie, a 17-year-old girl living in rural New Hampshire, and the challenges she faces growing up in a more or less abusive home where her parents keep her isolated and even use their own strange dialect of English. After getting a job as…
EDM started becoming really popular a few years ago, and now it seems like upbeat dance remixes are everywhere. I dismissed the genre immediately, but I made a deal with Catherine from Never Stationary: I would give EDM a chance if she did the same for one of my favorite things, and we’d both write our reactions.…
You know when you love something so much that it baffles you that someone could dislike it? That’s how I feel about spicy food. Not so-spicy-I-want-to-rip-my-esophagus-out, but I like a bit of heat. Catherine from Never Stationary didn’t feel the same. So we came together to do a project. I wrote why I love foods with a kick…
In response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale.
Roll the opening credits. Enter Average Troubled Male. Average Troubled Male has a mediocre, meaningless life. He feels trapped in his job and either hates his friends or has none. He can’t see the fun in anything, and he’s on the road to depression. What does he need? A) To get out of his cubicle…
What it is: Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh is an inside look at gang life in the Chicago housing projects, particularly the activity of the Black Kings at the Robert Taylor Homes during the early 1990s. Venkatesh spent years in and around the complex, collecting data and anecdotes for his graduate work in sociology. He…
Victim to Charm 