Tag: John Grisham

March 6 – A Reading Day

Denise Krebs11 Comments

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!

Slice of Life – Disengaging with Fiction

Denise Krebs12 Comments
Today’s Slice of Life at TwoWritingTeachers.org, 10 August 2021

The year was 1992 and my husband was traveling for his job. My children were two and four, and we had been at some friends’ house all day playing with their kids and passing the time. As we were leaving Kevin gave me a book, The Sphere, by Michael Crichton. I have no idea if the book was any good, or if I just needed an adult book and anything would have worked. Perhaps I had mentioned earlier in the day that it had been a long time since I had read a novel, and that is why he gave it to me. Anyway, I brought it home, put the girls to bed, and started reading it. I’m not a super fast reader, but for some reason my brain devoured this science fiction book and I read it until 3:00 a.m., and when I finally turned the last page I went to bed.

Those devouring reading times have come once in a while throughout my life when I have fasted too long from reading. For the past few years of teaching grade 5, my students and I have kept track of our reading. Each year I read 40-60 books. However, the pandemic came and reading became something I neglected. I don’t know why.

However, this month reading is coming back to me, fortunately. I read Clint Smith‘s How the Word is Passed, Winn Collier‘s Holy Curiosity, and yesterday I read most of The Racketeer by John Grisham. It was awful, but mesmerizing. I just had to finish it, kind of like The Sphere all those years ago. It reminded me that I need to find good fiction and start reading again! I need fiction to disengage and relieve stress, stress internalized from the daily news as well as the nonfiction books I’m reading.

Do you have any suggestions for my next adult or young adult fiction book?