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Debbie's Blog
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Michael Crummey was born & raised in Newfoundland, lives there still, and has set all of his meticulously researched novels & collections of short stories thus far in this beautiful, windswept, and harshly-demanding Canadian province.
is set in the outport villages of Paradise Deep and The Gut, joined by the Tolt Road over the headland between them, in an undefined period that covers most of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. The novel chronicles the lives of two rival families (the Sellers and the Devines) for six generations, and I often referred to the genealogy chart at the front of the book, especially during my first reading.
Inspired by the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Crummey has combined the starkly difficult conditions of pioneer outporters with a touch of magical realism. According to Wikipedia, magical realism is “an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even ‘normal’ setting [...] -
Michael Crummey was born & raised in Newfoundland, lives there still, and has set all of his meticulously researched novels & collections of short stories thus far in this beautiful, windswept, and harshly-demanding Canadian province.
is set in the outport villages of Paradise Deep and The Gut, joined by the Tolt Road over the headland between them, in an undefined period that covers most of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. The novel chronicles the lives of two rival families (the Sellers and the Devines) for six generations, and I often referred to the genealogy chart at the front of the book, especially during my first reading.
Inspired by the works of Gabriel García Márquez, Crummey has combined the starkly difficult conditions of pioneer outporters with a touch of magical realism. According to Wikipedia, magical realism is “an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even ‘normal’ setting [...] -
Inspired by the delightful movie trailer for this summer’s Julie & Julia I borrowed My Life in France from the library.
Julia Child, born Julia McWilliams the daughter of an ultra-right wing Republican, was raised in a “comfortable, WASPy, upper-middle-class family in sunny & non-intellectual Pasadena CA”. Although having served with OSS during WW II in Ceylon & China, she describes herself in her early thirties as “unpolished”. She had seen nothing of the world outside of her native U.S. and her war posting. Julia describes her husband Paul:
He was a cultured man, ten years older than I was, and by the time we met, during World War II, he had already traveled the world. Paul was a natty dresser and spoke French beautifully, and he adored good food and wine. He knew about dishes…that seemed hopelessly exotic to my untrained ear and tongue. I was lucky to marry Paul [when Julia was 34]…I would never have had my career without Paul Child.
This fascinating book, written with Paul’s [...] -
“Heather Summerhayes was six when her four-year-old sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and given only months to live. ‘Sixty-five roses’ was the way Pam pronounced the name of the disease that forever altered the lives of her siblings and parents.”
When Pam’s mother told the girls that Pam might die, Heather–the older sister, protector and defender–told Pam that she would die with her. From that moment forward, every thing that Heather–or anyone in the family–did was always predicated on Pam, her care, and her uncertain future.When Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis in the late 1950s, little was known about the disease or how to extend the life of CF patients. Cystic Fibrosis is the most common fatal genetic disease of children and young adults. It’s not a pretty disease. Eventually, the lungs of the victim fill with fluid & blood and she drowns in her own breath.
Although a Cystic Fibrosis Foundation existed in the U.S. at the time of Pam’s diagnosis, there w [...]
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Having read Joseph Boyden’s amazing Three Day Road, I was more than eager to read his second novel Through Black Spruce. Road was set during The Great War, a time period I particularly enjoy reading about. And, of course, the ending left every reader wondering what had become of Xavier Bird.
I was disappointed when I opened Spruce, as it is set in the present day and so seemed completely unrelated to Xavier. Nonetheless, Boyden pulled me in with his skillful prose that paints pictures in just a sentence. The first chapter ends with Will Bird talking about his youth: “I was young still, young enough to believe you can put out your gill nets and pull in options like fish.” I was completely hooked like one of those fish.
The story is told in alternating chapters by Will Bird, a Northern bush pilot (and, we find out, a son of Xavier’s second marriage) and his niece Annie Bird. Will is lying in a coma ( we are not at first told why) and Annie has come back home at the request o [...]
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Book Review: A Life's Design: The Life & Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison
January 12, 2009Before reading A Life’s Design: The Life and Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison I had never really given much thought to the design of everyday utilitarian items such as clock radios, hair dryers & plastic trashcans. From time to time, I may have thought: “That’s so easy to use” or “Oh – that’s a clever feature – I wonder who thought of that” without really giving any credence to the fact that someone had really designed it.
And yet – someone did, and a great deal of the consumer product design of the mid-twentieth century was done by Charles Harrison. Indeed, Mr. Harrison spent decades designing for Sears, and reading his book is like taking a trip through the Sears catalogues of my youth – the 50s, 60s & 70s
Mr. Harrison was born in 1931 in Shreveport LA and grew up in Prairie View TX, the son of a professor at Southern University. When Charles was a young teenager, his father moved the family to Phoenix where he had secured a job teaching at an all-black [...]
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I'm just testing out this link I found whereI can create custom t-shirt icons for my blogs. So I want to try it here.
What do you think?
The link is http://flipmytext.com/generators/tshirt/
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The illustrator and humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) once wrote a poem called The Purple Cow:
I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.
The poem became so popular and he became so closely linked with this single quatrain that he later wrote a palinode:Confession: and a Portrait, Too,
Upon a Background that I Rue!
Oh, yes, I wrote 'The Purple Cow,'
I'm sorry now I wrote it!
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'll kill you if you quote it."The moral? Be sure of your values when you take a stand.
