• About
  • My Books
  • Reviews
  • Wormcastings

Bookworm Rrriot

~ Thoughts on Books, Reading and Writing

Bookworm Rrriot

Category Archives: Uncategorized

September Update

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by mcasale2014 in reading, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 2 Comments

I haven’t posted for a while, so here’s a general update, emphasis on reading and writing (of course).  Also parenthood.

I have a nice new writing group—actually a 4-5 person group, not incidentally all women, who splintered off from my old Bucks County group.  We meet on Tuesday nights and are very supportive of one another’s work.    I’m avoiding groups that bring a lot of writing- guru-of-the-month and extreme ninja critique garbage with them.

I’ve decided sometimes a little self-protection is okay, I don’t always have to put myself completely out there to people who have already shown themselves to be unhelpful readers, to put it mildly.

 

Hannah is loving 5th grade so far.  They have a long reading block, in a room with fluffy pillows, comfy chairs and bookshelves and ALL THEY HAVE TO DO IS READ.  They can read books from there or bring books from home.  They can borrow the classroom books and take them home or around the school with them.  Every once in a while they talk individually to the teacher about what they’ve read.  That’s it.  

She said the first day was kind of nerve-wracking but she was okay because she got plenty of reading time—before school, recess, and reading class.  This summer she finally found her inner bookworm– at last.  I think I made her read so much she had to learn to like it in self-defense.

 I pointed out to Hannah that I was never in 5th grade and maybe now is the time for me to go back and catch up on whatever I missed.  In between reading sessions.  She pointed out to me, no.  I think it’s age discrimination, myself.

Hannah is smart, funny and kind (except about letting me go to school with her), but she narrates every moment of consciousness.  It’s like living with Proust, if Proust was ten and had an iPad.

Are you reading anything good?  I want to read the new Louise Penny but I’m making myself wait until I finish at least some of the 3 books I’m reading.  One of them is The Fifth Season, which just about caused a riot by winning at the Hugo awards.  I’m mostly reading it at work, which makes it almost impossible to come back from lunch. It takes a major display of willpower, which could probably be more usefully directed at other things.  

I’m working on a silly vampire and time travel paranormal young adult novel called Dark Lustre—sheer fun.  Also having fun deciding on my vampire YA pen name—currently in the running: Vanessa Gray, Charlotte Davenport (no points for guessing where I got those), or Jocelyn Madison.  I’m open to further suggestions.

What are you reading/writing/thinking?

Advertisements

Preview of the New Book

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Hello, fellow worms!

I’ve been working hard on my new book, Snow Angel, and not doing much blogging as you have probably noticed.  So I thought I would share a little of the novel in progress here. I hope all of your summers are full of fireflies and magic.

Maria

Snow Angel

Angie looked like a waif but we in the family knew she was something sleek and feral.  She was skinny to look at but boneless and eerily supple to the touch, like a cat.

That summer, she ran away from the grill one night with the marshmallow I was toasting, and when I, proud to be fast enough, proud to be strong enough, caught her, instead of twisting away she came close, sank her pointed little teeth into my shoulder until I let go, then ran away, laughing.

“It’s a nasty bite,” Grandma said.  “And close to her heart, she could get blood poisoning.  Human bites are dangerous.”

“Oh, Mother,” Aunt Mickey said, but she sent Angie to her room.

Angie ran up the stairs, laughing.  Aunt Mickey looked exhausted.

I had hot soaks and ice applied to my shoulder, depending on who was around, ice by my mother, heat by Grandma.  Aunt Mickey rolled her eyes at the fuss.

Late that night, Angie said, “You can bite me back, Nicky.  Go ahead.”

“Yes,” Jenna said.  “Chomp her, Nicky.  It’s Justice.”

Angie edged nearer, the strap of her pajama top sliding down her arm, bony shoulder offered.

“I don’t want to,” I said.  You’re too…”

“Skinny?” Jenna suggested.

“Rubbery.”

They laughed, as they often did at things I said.

I was the youngest, the fattest, the plainest.  With my long, wavy, mouse-colored hair and round gold-rimmed glasses I had an unfortunate resemblance to John Lennon, but they always had me right in the middle, just like in that picture, and on the rare occasions when we broke into two and one instead of our usual united three, it was always either me and Jenna together or me and Angie.

I loved them both.  I could never have bitten Angie back, even though I knew she would just have laughed.  She laughed when she bled, she laughed when Aunt Mickey, goaded past endurance by Angie (or, more often, by Grandma) spanked her.

She had laughed the week before when Jeremy gave her an Indian burn to get her to give back his Frisbee.  She laughed silently, her whole body shaking, tears standing in her big gray or green (we could never decide) eyes until Jeremy finally dropped her arm and turned away in disgust.

“You’re a big bully,” Jenna blazed at him.  “A big, — a big brute.”  The grownups said Jenna was dramatic.

She dropped to her knees in front of Angie, whose thin shoulders were still shaking in that silent way you thought was maybe a sob until you saw the crazy grin on her bony little face.

“A brute?” she gasped.

“A horrible brute.  Pick on somebody your own size,” Jenna told Jeremy, and the sight of his furious little sister made Jeremy laugh too, his shoulders shaking in a way that made beautiful, dark Jeremy look uncannily like Angie for a minute.

“Get somebody my own size to make me.”

I was already pulling one of my sweatshirts out of a drawer for Angie.  Perpetually hot, she wore spaghetti-strap tops my mother said were inappropriate for girls our age, tiny shorts that fit her in the waist but were too baggy and short everywhere else, no shoes at any time of the year if she could get away with it.  She radiated heat and kicked off the covers all night long as fast as you could pull them up, so Jenna and I always shared one bed in our room at the beach house and gave Angie the other one to herself.  But now she took my sweatshirt without argument and pulled it over her skimpy top (this one said Angel Baby in pink glitter script) to cover her red, swelling arm.

Brute or not, none of us would ever have told on Jeremy.

101 Artist’s Date Ideas.

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I love artist dates! Be sure to go alone….

The Artist's Way

  1. Visit an artist’s supply shop.
  2. Spend some time outdoors with your journal, sketchbook, craft supplies, etc.
  3. Go for a walk, and take your camera with you to document the experience.
  4. Stop by the library, and check out some CDs.
  5. Set a timer, and spend an hour working on something you’ve been putting off.
  6. Create an artist’s workspace in your home.
  7. See an Oscar-nominated movie or a foreign film.
  8. If you don’t have an artist’s blog, start one.
  9. Visit a “creative” shop that has nothing to do with what you actually do–an art supply store, a fabric shop, a music store.
  10. Grab a stack of magazines, and clip whatever looks interesting or cool to create your own inspiration board.
  11. Support the local arts scene. Go to a local festival, music event, art show, play, museum exhibit, etc.
  12. Plant something. Start your own herb garden. Butterfly garden. Plant a tomato or some…

View original post 1,124 more words

The Caregiver Author Interview

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Many thanks to Doreen McGettigan, author of Bristol Boys Stomp and the forthcoming The Stranger In My Recliner, for this interview on her book and writing blog!
http://doreenmcgettigan.com/2015/05/the-caregiver/

National Poetry Month: Dylan Thomas

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

This is my favorite poem of all time, so I decided to share it with you on the ultimate day of National Poetry Month.  I love how the images come back, a little different each time, throughout the poem.  That (along with the length) makes it a killer to memorize, but a pleasure to read.  Enjoy!

Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be 
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

National Poetry Month–Muriel Rukeyser

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Night Feeding

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death
I lay there dreaming and my magic head
remembered and forgot. On first cry I
remembered and forgot and did believe.
I knew love and I knew evil:
woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,
despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who
knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,
renewal of all waters and the time of the stars
and the black snake with gold bones.
Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke
fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.
Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth
walked through the house, black in the morning dark.
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.
Voices of all black animals crying to drink,
cries of all birth arise, simple as we,
found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,
deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.

National Poetry Month: Philip Appleman

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

For Margie at the Solstice

So now begins the long gray trudge

from sleet to drizzle, the stingy sun

dragging its shroud across the brittle

sky, as night by night the darkness

yields an inch, and every touch

of planet earth’s deliberate tiptoe

times the magic moment when the willow branch will go from dun

to dream, luring your cautious steps

to the matted grass of spring, and I

will celebrate the sunrise gift

of your quick smile, bright as any

crocus when you point to it,

triumphantly: one purple blossom,

pushing through the snow.

National Poetry Month: Dana Gioia

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Beware of Things in Duplicate… by Dana Gioia

Beware of things in duplicate:
a set of knives, the cufflinks in a drawer,
the dice, the pair of Queens, the eyes
of someone sitting next to you.
Attend that empty minute in the evening
when looking at the clock, you see
its hands are fixed on the same hour
you noticed at your morning coffee.
These are the moments to beware
when there is nothing so familiar
or so close that it cannot betray you:
a twin, an extra key, an echo,
your own reflection in the glass.

National Poetry Month: ee cummings

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in reading, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot tough because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

From Lillian’s Recipe Book

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by mcasale2014 in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

The Caregiver

“Maggie came in with a handful of leaves, which she rinsed, chopped, and sprinkled over the arrangement on her plate. The dark green bits looked nice against the red tomatoes and white cheese.

‘What is that called?’

‘This? Tomato salad, I guess.’

‘I thought maybe it was from—your country.’

Maggie seemed amused. ‘Oh, no, just my own invention, really. A Maggie salad. My father loves it too, I make it for lunch sometimes in the summer, if he is there.’”                                           —The Caregiver, 2014, by Maria Theresa Casale

Maggie Salad

Ingredients:

1-2 ripe red tomatoes, cut in wedges

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 lime, cut in wedges

Mint leaves or chives, chopped

Salt to taste

Arrange tomatoes on plate, scoop ricotta into the middle, squeeze one lime wedge over all, sprinkle with herbs and salt. Serve additional lime wedges on the side. There is no point making this unless you have good summer tomatoes.

Savor, and think of home.

← Older posts

Like Bookworm Rrriot on Facebook

Like Bookworm Rrriot on Facebook

Blogs I Follow

Goodreads

Archives

  • September 2016
  • December 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
My Tweets
Advertisements

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 304 other followers

The Caregiver

The Caregiver

Top Posts & Pages

  • September Update

Categories

  • books (19)
  • Children's Books (7)
  • Grief (2)
  • National Poetry Month (1)
  • Putting some skin in the game (4)
  • reading (22)
  • Uncategorized (38)
  • writing (21)

Blog at WordPress.com.