For the last two years, I have participated in the reading challenge on Goodreads. I’ve challenged myself to read 50 books. In 2016, I read 23. In 2017, I read 34. And this year, I’ll also challenge myself to read 50 books. It’s good to recognize that sometimes challenges take longer than a year to …
I’ve always believed that reading transports and transforms you, not only in the way it introduces you to new worlds and new experiences but also in the way it endears and entices you to characters while causing you to wish for the death and destruction of other characters. Reading reveals your true nature. It reveals …
As we were traveling to see family, Sam and I were listening to a NPR interview with the author of Lab Girl. She was talking about the difficulty she has had as a woman in a male-dominated profession. Tom Ashbrook asked if she would thought that she would ever be able to operate in her profession, …
Two and a half years ago, I got a crazy idea to start an independent press. I had been working for Harrelson Marketing with authors, nonprofits, and musicians trying to help them find their voices as I pursued the same in seminary. What I found was that authors, especially were not getting much money for …
I’ve been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, which has made me fall in love with her writing and her ability to tell a story all over again. As I talking to Elisabeth this week on our weekly podcast, she told me that Gilbert had done several Ted Talks, which of …
I went to the library today expecting to fess up to the fact that I had turned in an overdue book because it was a new release, and I just wasn’t quite finished with it. I knew what I had done and even if I had forgotten the email notice addressed Merianna Louise Neely Harrelson …
We have now published 3 books in print and after agonizing after each and every detail of the formatting and book cover, it makes it hard for me to read other books. I notice things I didn’t notice before. (Is it just me or are all the copies of Ken Follett’s Edge of Eternity printed …
I did it. I actually renewed my books before any fines were incurred. This sounds simple, especially since the options for renewing your library books are endless: by phone, in person, online. Why I haven’t been able to do it effectively is beyond me, but it has gotten to the point that my husband won’t …
I’m reading Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal and ran across this moment of brilliance from the character of Joshua or Christ in Christopher Moore’s narrative: No, action. Contemplation. Steadiness. Conservatism. A wall is the defense of a country that values inaction. But a wall imprisons the people of a country as much …
Did you know there were reading brain labs that study how kids learn to read? “The theory of the fourth-grade shift had been based on behavioral data,” says the lead author of the study, Donna Coch. She heads the Reading Brains Lab at Dartmouth College. We actually ran a reading lab in the summer at …
