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I love this little book and I?m not a knitter. I knit but how can someone who's spent more than two years trying to knit one hat -- call themselves a knitter? I do love knitters and knitted things. I'm also not a poet but I enjoy reading them and there are several very proficient haiku Gatherers and poets. But you don't have to love haiku to ejoy this little book.
Its author, Maria Fire, is more than a knitting poet with a gift for haiku, she is also a wonderful teller of stories. The yarns that compose this gem of a book come in a rainbow of narrative hues. Stories from her past?of the old woman who taught her to knit, of friends who knit their way through sadness, of children and men who learned to knit. There are gleanings from other writers? stories about characters who knit, and of course, there is haiku. ?Kitting with spirits/shedding again and again, what you think you know.? One haiku for each narrative on a separate page of its own with the image of yarn or knitting needles to purl the two together.
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(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
When The Liar?s Diary arrived in the mail it held me captive for three days. Oh, I wanted to finish it the very day I began to read it, but life and work and family intervened. Three quarters of the way through I no longer accepted interruptions. I put everything on hold and read until the wee hours of the morning.
The Liar?s Diary begins innocuously at first ? a new teacher arrives at the school where Jeanne Cross, a suburban wife and mother works as a secretary. Ali Mather is beautiful, charismatic, and willful. She is a brilliant composer and violinist. Students, fellow teachers, and even crusty old janitors fall under her spell. Jeanne, whose initial distrust and jealousy melts as Ali and she form an unlikely friendship is similarly captivated despite herself. Ali is outspoken, forthright, and sexual. Jeanne is quite the opposite ? a woman who does not know what she thinks or feels and who prefers not knowing rather than attempting to probe the shadowy questions and challenges that confront her on a daily basis.
A strong undertone of psychological and emotional abuse runs through The Liar?s Diary, though Francis is such a fine writer that she never labels it as such. Instead, she reveals through narrative the master manipulator that Jeanne?s handsome doctor husband has become -- soft spoken, icily rational, subtly demoralizing. She shows Jeanne wither emotionally from his hostility but it is Jaime who suffers the most. His father?s contempt and criticism, cloaked under a guise of false camaraderie, send him to the refrigerator for comfort. He gorges on junk food and hides the evidence while his mother, though worrying about his weight, plies him with the food he loves to assuage the pain that she cannot quite get herself to acknowledge.
Ali, though, sees through the fa?ade of niceness that pervades the Cross household and challenges Jeanne to confront it. I will stop here, because to tell you more would be to share too much of a story that grows more complex and intriguing as it builds in intensity.
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(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
In Circle of Mysteries, Weber marshals not only her impressive scholarship as a Doctor of Divinity and her thoughtful insight into human nature as a licensed spiritual counselor and chaplain but also shares generously of the deep spiritual awareness that pervades her life. Structured in a format similar to the divisions in the rosary itself, the book offers narrative in the form of memoir as Weber takes us into the experience of the rosary as it touches her life and the lives of other women. She then allows Mother Wisdom to speak reminding us of our strength and beauty. In the meditations on each bead Weber introduces us to Mary herself, gently lifting the mother of Christ off the pedestal where religion has placed her and restoring her to us as sister and beloved friend.
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blsbwdc has commented on (3) products.
Knit One, Haiku Too by Maria Fire
blsbwdc, June 4, 2007
I love this little book and I?m not a knitter. I knit but how can someone who's spent more than two years trying to knit one hat -- call themselves a knitter? I do love knitters and knitted things. I'm also not a poet but I enjoy reading them and there are several very proficient haiku Gatherers and poets. But you don't have to love haiku to ejoy this little book.Its author, Maria Fire, is more than a knitting poet with a gift for haiku, she is also a wonderful teller of stories. The yarns that compose this gem of a book come in a rainbow of narrative hues. Stories from her past?of the old woman who taught her to knit, of friends who knit their way through sadness, of children and men who learned to knit. There are gleanings from other writers? stories about characters who knit, and of course, there is haiku. ?Kitting with spirits/shedding again and again, what you think you know.? One haiku for each narrative on a separate page of its own with the image of yarn or knitting needles to purl the two together.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
The Liar's Diary by Patry Francis
blsbwdc, June 4, 2007
When The Liar?s Diary arrived in the mail it held me captive for three days. Oh, I wanted to finish it the very day I began to read it, but life and work and family intervened. Three quarters of the way through I no longer accepted interruptions. I put everything on hold and read until the wee hours of the morning.The Liar?s Diary begins innocuously at first ? a new teacher arrives at the school where Jeanne Cross, a suburban wife and mother works as a secretary. Ali Mather is beautiful, charismatic, and willful. She is a brilliant composer and violinist. Students, fellow teachers, and even crusty old janitors fall under her spell. Jeanne, whose initial distrust and jealousy melts as Ali and she form an unlikely friendship is similarly captivated despite herself. Ali is outspoken, forthright, and sexual. Jeanne is quite the opposite ? a woman who does not know what she thinks or feels and who prefers not knowing rather than attempting to probe the shadowy questions and challenges that confront her on a daily basis.
A strong undertone of psychological and emotional abuse runs through The Liar?s Diary, though Francis is such a fine writer that she never labels it as such. Instead, she reveals through narrative the master manipulator that Jeanne?s handsome doctor husband has become -- soft spoken, icily rational, subtly demoralizing. She shows Jeanne wither emotionally from his hostility but it is Jaime who suffers the most. His father?s contempt and criticism, cloaked under a guise of false camaraderie, send him to the refrigerator for comfort. He gorges on junk food and hides the evidence while his mother, though worrying about his weight, plies him with the food he loves to assuage the pain that she cannot quite get herself to acknowledge.
Ali, though, sees through the fa?ade of niceness that pervades the Cross household and challenges Jeanne to confront it. I will stop here, because to tell you more would be to share too much of a story that grows more complex and intriguing as it builds in intensity.
(4 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Circle of Mysteries: The Woman's Rosary Book Including the Mysteries of Light by Christin Lore Weber
blsbwdc, June 4, 2007
In Circle of Mysteries, Weber marshals not only her impressive scholarship as a Doctor of Divinity and her thoughtful insight into human nature as a licensed spiritual counselor and chaplain but also shares generously of the deep spiritual awareness that pervades her life. Structured in a format similar to the divisions in the rosary itself, the book offers narrative in the form of memoir as Weber takes us into the experience of the rosary as it touches her life and the lives of other women. She then allows Mother Wisdom to speak reminding us of our strength and beauty. In the meditations on each bead Weber introduces us to Mary herself, gently lifting the mother of Christ off the pedestal where religion has placed her and restoring her to us as sister and beloved friend.