Space Station Mir

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl ! I've decided to write on a theme of thankfulness for a number of books for different reasons. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody celebrating this week, and have a good week to everybody else! Tracks by Louise Erdrich           At first, I wanted to make a list of Native American authors, but I don't think I've read any but Louise   Erdrich. I'm grateful to have read her, and to have the chance to read more of her books, and more books    by different Native American authors. 2. The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney This is a surprisingly heartwarming book about a family that learns to be grateful for what they have. 3. Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Usually Avoid Books with Words Like 'Journey' in the Title by Leslie Gray Streeter I'm grateful for this book and for the author visiting our book club (virtually). 4. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry ...

 They're not book characters, but... My husband made this meme of our dogs and their namesakes, Star Trek captains Janeway and Picard.  Happy Top Ten Two Tuesday!

It's hard to decide what my favorite book was for October since they were all such enjoyable reads. Of the four books I managed to finish,  My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry  was the most entrancing and  Black Widow  (ironically) was the funniest. I read it for my book club, and it was picked because someone in my book club knows the author's brother-in-law. She's coming to our (virtual) meeting in December, and I'm looking forward to it! Books Finished This Month My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox How to Think Like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like "Journey" in the Title by Leslie Gray Streeter Watched This Month      Netflix The Trial of the Chicago 7  This movie was fun, but hard to watch. Glad I watched it a couple weeks before the election, but still disturbing...

Scott Newstok’s new book, How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, makes a seemingly radical proposition: what if we returned to the teaching methods of Shakespeare’s day? No, Newstok isn’t advocating corporal punishment, Greek and Latin translations, or the endless rote memorization that Shakespeare himself mocked. However, Shakespeare’ s genius, Newstok claims, can be nurtured, and he, professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College in Tennessee, knows how. The specious-sounding treatise examines less the brain waves in the Bard's head than the methods that shaped his education. Although organized into fourteen short chapters (a number upon which the introduction spends nearly two pages philosophizing), the book tends to hit you over the head with its erudition, but that's part of its charm. Newstok’s prodigious use of quotes, which extends from the Table of Contents to the Index, at first ca...