Books: Sandra Dijkstra, what teachers read, play scripts, baseball, airplane books

I’m Talking Monster Books

Amy had a title on this book. She called it Wind and Water. She was using the theme of the I Ching. I looked at these synopses of the stories, and I thought the chapter titles looked fine. But I thought, I am not taking a book to New York with the title Wind and Water — I will be laughed out of Manhattan!

By Mani Mir | Read full article

Plays In Words

Didn’t anybody know who this was? Why wasn’t the crowd mobbing the dapper dramatist for all he was worth? I felt like running to him and offering my support, as one unrecognized writer to another, shouting. “Neil! Neil Simon! Compadre!” and giving him a warm abrazo and declaring I had read all of his work and had loved it ever since seeing Come Blow Your Horn at Radio City Music Hall with my parents when I was 12.

By Joe Applegate | Read full article

The Smaller the Ball

Williams lifted individualism to a new plateau in supposedly collectivist sports when, on the occasion of his being walked with the bases loaded in the last of the ninth to force in the winning run for his Boston Red So, he threw his bat up in the air in disgust at not having been given a good pitch to hit. This was the mark of a Romantic virtuoso standing alone on a mountaintop with a unique gift separating him from the rest of humdrum humanity.

By Linda Nevin | Read full article

There Is No Airplane Like a Book

You laugh, but can you place "facilitated,” "relationships,” "development," "feelings," "murder prevention,” "loving" in one tightly packed sentence? No, you cannot. But it’s the murder-prevention part I’m interested in, particularly among the “‘significant other" portions of my life.

By Patrick Daugherty | Read full article

What Teachers Read

A poet, playwright, and novelist who also leaches composition part-time at Grossmont College. Kamal Kapur is literally reading three books at once: Mary Shelley’s Monster by Martin Tropp, The Idea of a Theater by Francis Fergusson, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote. "I read things all at once which are geared toward a certain project I’m working on." she reveals. “Reading is one of my favorite things in life.”

By Dave Zielinski | Read full article