writing – Anita DeRouen

There Be Books

March 3, 2024March 3, 2024 anitaderouen

I’ve been reading a lot over the last few months. Once I mostly settled into my life as a high school teacher, I started wanting to enjoy books again. It’s been a great journey so far; I’ve read traditional and contemporary classics, trashy novels, YA titles–and the world of books keeps leading me onward to discover more.

I’m keeping a book journal–a small notebook where I log what I’ve read, what I think of the book, and how I’d rate it for myself. That’s personal–a place for me to look back and reflect on what I’ve been reading and on what I think about what I’ve been reading and about how well I’ve enjoyed the reading. But I’ve been wanting to go further.

It’s hard to build book community in real life, especially after the number that COVID has done to us all. It was already difficult to get to a book group discussion before it, but now I have to think of all of these other elements surrounding my choices of where to go and be when I’m not in my classroom or being mom. I miss coffee shops and other hangout spaces, but to be truthful, I’ve always been more of a homebody, so while I long for those spaces as POSSIBILITIES, I know that they weren’t so much regular realities as sometime spaces to occupy.

So…book community. Certainly available in online spaces in many varieties, but which platform and what people and how do I choose? Spoiler alert: I choose me.

Welcome. However you’ve found your way here, I’m glad you’ve come. I’ll tell you about the books I’ve read and the books I’m reading and the books to come. If you like, you can tell me what you think about those books or about my thoughts on those books. Will I respond? Maybe. Will I read what you say? Definitely. Will I write when I want to write and what I want to write with (mostly) little thought to what you might want to read or hear? Probably. The site itself may be defunct, but the blog is, as blogs are, My Space.

Currently reading: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

I’ve been reading this book for two months now; I started it in January, and I keep getting sidetracked by other things. As of this typing, I’m halfway through, and I’m seriously considering finishing it today. My Kindle tells me I’ve got about 3 hours of focused reading to do to finish, and I think I can manage that.

So far? The book is beautifully written, with a voice that is simultaneously accusatory, bewildered, innocent, and wise. Our unnamed narrator is bouncing through the world like Candide (and Ellison makes that reference early on), and like Candide he learns about the realities of humanity and the human condition as he falls from one situation into another. Unlike Candide, though, our narrator is black and in the United States, and his experience represents the absurdities of modern black life in this racist country. More when I’m done…

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Celebrate

December 31, 2013December 31, 2013 anitaderouen

Dancing numbers under a rotating disco ball smile at me. The 4 stands awkwardly to the side, eyes shifting between me and the 3, and I begin to wonder if, as the day goes forward, the 4 will get just that half-step bolder, eventually shoving the 3 into the trash heap and taking its rightful place at the end of the number conga line.

Google has changed its masthead. The year, it seems, has come to an end.

Continue reading “Celebrate” →

Play, Work

Shortcomings

August 29, 2012August 29, 2012 anitaderouen

We’re all at home this afternoon due to that little squall down in the Gulf of Mexico, so I decided to have a look at the photos I took for the first project in my digital art class. I’ll spare you the horror and just share this picture of my absolutely delectable subjects.

They’re all pretty much gone now; we had the broccoli (in the plastic bag to protect from dust) for lunch with the fabulous Stacy and Mimi, and I have it on good authority that the pineapple provided a perfect morning snack for two hungry toddlers on a rainy day playdate. The grapes and I got acquainted last night after supper.

I was supposed to get shots of my subjects that I could use in a hybrid fruit/vegetable/fruitable project, and I did take a few photographs, but they weren’t lit very well and the tripod was crooked and I just couldn’t seem to wrap my head around all the parts of the project, so I ate my subjects with the idea that I’d get a new batch over the weekend when the weather’s better and give it another go.

The really important thing that came out of this experience, though, was the reminder that we don’t all know how to do everything, and that we can always develop new competencies. Before going to take the photos, I participated in a small group discussion of our sketches for our projects, and all I could think about during the experience was how my writing students must feel when they have to share their drafts with their classmates. Maybe I’m wrong–maybe they all feel confident and competent as they send around those tentative words–but I know that at least a few of them over the years must have felt as I did yesterday: humble and inadequate and not a little bit frightened to reveal just how amateur and feeble my skills are in comparison to the work of those more confident and experienced than I.

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Craptastic Comments

August 24, 2012 anitaderouen

So Ed Dante has come clean in a soon-to-be-published tell all (The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat). I just read a Chronicle interview article with Daye Tomar, the ghostwriter, and after reading the comments, in which many writers took issue with Tomar’s ethos and morals or questioned the validity of his claim to having ghostwritten graduate level work, I can only speak in images.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so cynical, but I have no trouble believing any of his claims. Of course, that doesn’t mean I think he was right to do what he did. Looking forward to reading the book.