Susan
said "yes" to attending the event: Wordstock.
date: October 11, 2009 06:31PM
location: The Wordstock Book Fair @ the Oregon Convention Center , 777 NW MLK Jr Blvd, Portland, OR, The United States
description: I will be one of the readers at the Columbia Sportswear Page during the 11-1 slot for finalists for the Oregon Book Award. At other times, I'll be sitting at the Pacific University table, talking up the program (or talking it down if you get me drunk. Kidding.).
Did I already mention a hundred times that "Crazy Love" is a finalist for the Ken Kesey Award for fiction? Because "Crazy Love" is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award! Woohoo!
Susan said: I can't wait!!! ]]>
Debra Gwartney’s Live Through This should be required reading for all parents and all adolescents, because Gwartney and her daughters have “lived through” a worst nightmare scenario for most parents, and they’ve done it with love and grit and have come out whole and together on the other side. Pre-teens and teens should read it because it will show them the true consequences of what might initially feel like a lark, like freedom, like the perfect way to get back at a parent with whom they’re angry.
Gwartney’s heart leads her, and her reader, as she continually falls back and regroups to face again the agony of each day missing and seeking her runaway daughters. We also share the daughters’ love for each other, love that leads sometimes to ruin and ultimately to redemption. None of this is easy; this book does not omit the visceral to cater to the faint of heart. Gwartney not only looks unflinchingly at what her daughters experienced while on their own, but also unsparingly examines what she perceives to be her own weaknesses as a parent, an adult, a woman. There is substance abuse in this story, drugs and alcohol, and there is divorce and loss and anger, but it is above all a love story.
This is an important story to be told, to be shared, and Gwartney’s devotion to her craft as a writer is only outshone by her devotion to her daughters. As someone with a significant young person in my life who has struggled with addiction, someone who chose to be absent from our lives for ten years, I found information, comfort and acceptance in this book. If you do not share the author’s circumstances, you will find much to learn in these pages should similar issues arise in you life, and things to appreciate more avidly if they do not. Gwartney never gives up, and what she so generously and honestly shares in this book is a tribute to her as a mother and a writer. She has earned every word.
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by Roberto Bolaño
Brandi wrote: "I signed up for your contemp. lit class next term and have already ordered this online. I can't wait to read it! "
Yay!! I am SO lucky!!
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Wow...I'm only half way through, but the language is gorgeous and the scope is huge and I'm loving it. ]]>
More spellbinding than the first book. ]]>
If you love the show (Showtime), you'll enjoy the books! ]]>
Just a lot of fun. ]]>
I couldn't put it down! Recommended by a student, I knew I'd love it when I saw that books are at its center, one book in particular the plot of which is mirrored by the protagonist's life. ]]>