March 6 – A Reading Day

March 6, 2023 TwoWritingTeachers.org

Sunday was a lazy lovely day. After I went to the Slice of Life meet up and heard all the passionate educators sharing what they are reading, I was inspired. You see, I have been neglecting my reading. So, I made this chilly and windy day one to sit and read.

First I finished Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes–what a precious novel in verse, all written in tankas, five-line poems with syllable counts of 5-7-5-7-7. What a feat. The character development and storytelling was beautiful and compelling, all in such limited words. Here is a summary of the book in a tanka.

Garvey smart, unsure
Football? Or chess and sci-fi?
He knows what Dad wants, but
He follows his path, now he
And Dad connect with music

Then I started a John Grisham novel The Confession because my husband just finished and enjoyed it. I wanted something easy to read before I tackle two books for book studies starting this month. Tomorrow I’ll start reading White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao (with @kindcotton) and On Critical Race Theory by Victor Ray (with @taniastake)

 

I am participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge: A slice a day for all of March. Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

11 thoughts on “March 6 – A Reading Day

  1. Ooo, I missed the meet up and haven’t read that book by Grimes yet! I love her Bronx Masquerade–so good those many voices in prose and poetry. I’ll have to check out Garvey’s Choice. Thanks!

  2. I was glad to see you this morning. I had to stop by because I’m always lured into any post that mentions books, cats. or cookies. And I would probably add grandchildren to my list too. I liked Garvey’s Choice. And I’m glad you’re reading something easy before tackling your book studies, important reads but full of much to contemplate.

  3. Hello Denise,

    It was so nice to see you at the meet up this morning. I am glad you were able to snuggle down this afternoon and read, read, read. It sounds like you have a plan moving forward.
    On a different note, I really like the artwork that you have for the banner of your blog – it looks Georgia O’Keefe inspired. Did you paint it yourself?

    Heidi C (Book dragon at Wordsmithing)

    1. Heidi, thank you for the comment about my banner. It is a painting that my younger daughter did in high school. The original hangs in our living room now, and I enjoy it every day.

  4. Denise, I’m so glad that you spent a Sunday savoring the pages of books. It was wonderful seeing the group yesterday and having a chance to talk face to face via Zoom. I enjoyed listing everyone’s book suggestions and wrote down so many prophetic statements….for example, “teachers of writing should be writing.” Simple yet so profound. Enjoy the Grisham! It’s nice to read for pleasure, and to seize the moments the way you did!

  5. Denise,
    Snaps for you, my friend! How was the John Grisham novel? White Women is top of my TBR after I finish a pile of books I’ve started. March kills my reading life as I prioritize blogging and commenting,

  6. Nice to meet you yesterday! I’m glad you were inspired to read. 🙂 I will be adding the white women book to my to read list.

  7. A Sunday reading day is a treasure of a day! Loved your tanka – and I must check out this book by Nikki Grimes; hard to imagine an entire story told with this poetry structure.

  8. Sounds like a lovely day. I had a day like that on Friday. Read a bunch of my book and finished it! Where the Crawdads Sing. Loved it!

  9. I was hoping when I clicked on your post, I would find a book to add to my TBR and I did! White Women will be something I read soon. I love Garvey’s Choice. We’ve read that with our 5th graders on EPIC. It was such a great book about identity that we wove into our identity work.

  10. Denise, you do have some challenging texts to read. I’m currently involved in a book club that’s focus is on rural voices. It’s quite interesting. We have our first zoom meet on Tuesday evening. I hope to write a post about it after the meeting. Enjoy the Grisham book. I want to check out the Nikki Grimes book and the white woman racism one sounds intriguing.

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