Productive Reading Week

My summer goal of reading Newberry Award winners continues by finishing "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry" by Mildred Taylor. It was a great story highlighting continued segregation, racism and hate crimes years after the Civil War. The main character was Cassie Logan a 9 year old girl with a firery temper, love of learning and reading and trying to keep up with her older brother Stacey. I was glad I didn't read this book with both kids. I think it would have been a little too confusing/complex for my 6 year old, but I'm going to encourage my 9 year old to read it. I always get many stirred up emotions when reading about slavery, oppression of African Americans and the horror of not thinking a person, who is other than "white",is not really a person.

I also did some reading of three literary journals/magazines. This was prompted by my involvement in a writing group I joined this summer. There are four women in the group and we all come to the table with different writing styles,goals, writing backgrounds, but two areas we all have in common are we are women and mothers. Hence the name of our group is The Written Mom. Being a part of this group has made me focus, write more and read more. It has been an education and I'm very thankful to be able to gleam so much in my writing life and real life from these ladies.

So I read "Poetry" which was ok and is totally what it sounds like- journal filled with poems, advertisements for MFA programs, and info on the abundant amount of poetry contests out there. I was unaware that many of the contests require submission fee ( I saw anywhere from $10-50/submission). I still am not really finding any poetry or poet that speaks to me. I think poetry may be above my intelligence factor. I think I don't understand or see the beauty in a poem because I've missed the symbol or subtle gist of what the author is really trying to say or describe. But alas I will keep searching and hope to find that poet whose poems I love so much I want to memorize.

I read over half of the June Paris Review and felt like I had read a book. It included interviews of authors, playwright, poetry (again didn't connect), and short stories.

Reading these journals opened my eyes to genres and topics I never would have thought about reading. Again furthering my reading education.

So I write right now sitting in a favorite library of mine eager to finish this post and continue this writing/reading education or "voyage" by finding further books and journals to conquer.

-----
Sent from mBox Mail
Hotmail for iPhone and iPod Touch
http://www.fluentfactory.com/mboxmail