Magical Memoir Moments
Julie and Julia Aren't Enough: They Both Needed Judith!
Did you see the summer’s best memoir movie, Julie & Julia? If not, hurry to a theater near you and catch it before it leaves. If you missed the trailer, you can find it here: I read and relished My Life in France a few months ago and then gave the book to one of…
The Harvest Time of Life: A Mini-Memoir
Last Sunday, Stuart and I celebrated the last day of August with one of our many bike rides in the hill/woods/lake country here in southwestern Michigan. We have enjoyed watching the grape vines become green, then produce fruit, and soon we will get to observe the harvest. Next Tuesday another sign of the season arrives–all…
Nostalgia: How Important to the Memoir Writer? Reader?
One of my colleagues, Deb Higgins, sent around an email that has evidently gone viral. It depicts lots of items remembered only by Baby Boomers and their elders. I used the skate key picture from that email as an illustration for Lanie Tankard’s guest blog on Touchstones. But I thought you might like to see…
Britt Bravo's Links: Contests, Reading Challenges, Carnivals
Britt Bravo is a little more than half as old as I am and twice as smart. So she’s perfect as a consultant. You can find her online in many places, but here is her website. When we spent an hour together on the phone recently, she sent me a list of links, many of…
Touchstones: Keys to a Great Memoir
Guest blogger Lanie Tankard returns today to talk about memories of her childhood using “luminous particulars”-a phrase borrowed from Jane Kenyon and Ezra Pound via my former colleague at Goshen College Ann Hostetler. Lanie’s word for those wonderfully evocative objects is “touchstones.” If you enjoy this beautiful essay, you may want to read her first…
100Memoirs Celebrates One Year: So Much Change, So Much to Learn!
My first post to this blog took place August 9, 2008. It was a birthday present from my son Anthony, who has his own blog. Since then, there have been 118 other posts and 398 comments. Thank you, dear readers! I especially want to thank several other bloggers, GutsyWriter, Babsland, OKChelsea, for commenting frequently, both…
Twenty Tips after Forty Years of Marriage: A Mini-Memoir
Marriage does not come with an instruction manual. Wise couples get some kind of counseling, often from the minister who marries them. They hear about marriage being complex and sometimes challenging – and listen without believing– in the same way that people in good health receive stories about dying. If ever a two people qualified…
The Year of Magical Thinking: A Memoir to Read and Reread
When Joan Didion’s husband John Gregory Dunne dropped dead on December 30, 2003, he was in the middle of a speaking a sentence in their living room. She was mixing a salad for their dinner. As I write these words, Stuart and I are about to sit down to eat the dinner the two of…
Eight Tips for a Great "Staycation": A Mini-Memoir
You know that feeling you get at the end of an exotic vacation to Disney World or New York City or Istanbul? Or the feeling in August that summer is slipping through your fingers? A feeling akin to nausea? You wish you had time now to organize your pictures, mow the yard, sit on the…
Don't Call Me Mother: A Memoir That Teaches When to Hold 'em and When to Fold 'em
Willa Cather once said that nothing is more exciting in life than to get inside the skin of another person. Sometimes I get that feeling when I make a new friend or have a deep conversation with an old one. Other times books transform me in a similar way. I love reading just for the…