Subscribe to Blog via Email
Search the site
Recent Comments
- kjumai on “There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations.”
- bababhuvaneshus on “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo . . .”
- Owen Landsverk on 10 Best Books for College Teachers Update
- Alex on “Judging by her publicity photos, the natural assumption would be that American novelist Edith Wharton wrote in a traditional manner, at the gold-tooled leather-topped desk in her extremely well-stocked library.”
- David Milbradt on “Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…”
Categories
-
Recent Posts
- “When I was 4 months pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, I was . . . thrown into a filthy, windowless, smelly horse stall.”
- “Think mystery, not mastery.”
- “I’ve sometimes wondered whether novelists like to be remembered for what they’ve said or because they’ve said it in their own particular way – in their own distinctive voice.”
- “You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.”
- “I don’t think you’re dying, ” I said. “I think you’ve just got a touch of cancer.”
Tags
- a favorite author
- a favorite novelist
- Anne Tyler
- Annie Dillard
- Ann Patchett
- Barbara Pym
- British humor
- Charles Dickens
- Courage to Teach
- depression
- Discussion in the College Classroom
- Elizabeth Strout
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry Taylor
- iGen
- Jane Smiley
- Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Learner-Centered Teaching
- learning
- Margaret Atwood
- Mary Oliver
- Memoir
- metaphors
- My Struggle
- Nobel Prize
- Parker Palmer
- pedagogy
- poetry
- Pulitzer Prize
- Pulitzer Prize winner
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- recommended
- Reflection
- Richard Russo
- Shakespeare
- Small Teaching
- Ted Kooser
- The Spark of Learning
- truth
- Virginia Woolf
- Walt Whitman
- William Stafford
- William Zinsser
- you-are-there reading
A Fine Line
Archives
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
Tag Archives: Virginia Woolf
“Fiction . . . is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web . . .”
Virginia Woolf continues, “attached ever so lightly, perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves.” It’s only when the web is … Continue reading
“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo . . .”
Virginia Woolf argues that life is not comprised of an orderly series of events, but rather, life is complex and spiritual in nature. Therefore, when writing about life, novelists should “. . . convey this varying, unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged a favorite writer, luminous halo, The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf
1 Comment
“But no less than the daily food we eat, the daily literature we consume can have significant benefits.”
Can reading a great book be therapeutic? Every English teacher I know would say yes. Some of us, in fact, prescribe books to our friends who might want help in delicate situations. What’s new here is the idea that neuroscientists … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged Angus Fletcher, Literary techniques, Virginia Woolf, Wonderworks
Leave a comment
“And I know that I must go on doing this dance on hot bricks till I die.”
The brilliant novelist Virginia Woolf used this metaphor to describe her ongoing struggle with mental health in her diary on March 1, 1937, which was 42 years after her first nervous breakdown and four years before she drowned herself. What … Continue reading
“[L]adies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.”
Purely by coincidence, I was reading Virginia Woolf”s A Room of One’s Own during the week that the first woman became the presumptive nominee for a major political party in the U.S. In 1928, when Woolf gave a series of … Continue reading
Posted in non-fiction
Tagged A Room of One's Own, access to resources, Equality, Virginia Woolf, Women's Rights
Leave a comment