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Tag Archives: reading

A Mary Oliver Story

19 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by itsaphanlife in Uncategorized

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Tags

books, Mary Oliver, poetry, reading

H
ere is a Mary Oliver story for you.

One summer many years ago, when I was starting my first year in college and trying to figure out who I would become, my mom and I stayed in Cape Cod for cheap at the home of a friend of hers from medical school.

Our first morning there, my mother woke up at dawn for a walk on the beach and asked me if I wanted to come. I groggily, grumpily, told her no, preferring to sleep in. I was at the age when one gets angry at being pulled along to family vacations, when there are more important things to do than take a morning walk with your mom. I had brought some paperbacks that I wanted to get through and had stayed up late the night before reading them, in part to not deal with possible conversations or forced chatter with my mom’s medical school friends.

An hour later, just as I was waking up from slumber, my mother came in, all smiles and sun happy.

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Books I’ve read on my year off

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by itsaphanlife in Books and Films: reviews

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Tags

books, nonfiction, novels, reading

It’s coming upon a full year since I took my sabbatical, and I suppose it’s pretty much over now. Aside from giving me time to write, this break also allowed me to do more reading than I normally could in the hurly burly of attending to a full time teaching load.

Here are the books I’ve finished in my year off, and a few words about a few of them (to be added to when I have time). I should say that I’m quite positive about the books on this list, mostly because I’ll never finish a book I don’t like, and I’ve leafed through many books and put them down partway through. Life and sabbatical years are too short to waste on bad reading.

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