Header

Examples of the best phd dissertation are usually collected in a lists that we regularly publish at the main page of the site. Archive is also available.

Author Archives: Lackey

About Lackey

I am a teacher, reader, book evangelist, traveler, wife, mother, creator, seamstress, designer

The Girls by Emma Cline

August 27th, 2016 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

Jacket.aspx

I have been so negligent about writing book reviews lately but this one needs to be done immediately.  I finished reading Emma Cline’s The Girls today after being riveted by the novel for a few days.  I had read a NY Times review of the book earlier this summer, and patiently waited for the ebook to be available from the library.   I am not curiously drawn to anything having to do with cults or Charles Manson, but the early press about the manuscript leading to a bidding war among a dozen publishers and the seven figure, three book deal made me awfully interested.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the story is tightly focused on the girls – of course.  The central character, Evie, is fourteen in the summer of 1969.  Her divorced parents seem preoccupied, her best friend seems distant, her town seems disenchanted – she is ripe for the allure of Suzanne, an older girl she sees one day with a few other girls harvesting food from a dumpster.  When Suzanne eyes Evie with a lingering glance, Evie is struck.  What follows are multiple trips and extended stays at the Mansonesque commune where a haunting musician named Russell commands.  Of course there is plenty of sex and drugs and music, but the focus is on the relationship between Evie and Suzanne.  Of course there is a climactic event of violence and a lifetime of lingering guilt by association for Evie, who is an older adult in the opening chapter and subsequent sections.

Cline knows girls and can expose the fragility of innocence with beautifully crafted prose.  This is a book that people will be talking about and girls will be reading.



Historic downtown Bedford, Pennsylvania is full of unique shops, but Mary’s Quilt Shop is a sewist’s one-of-kind dream destination.  The shop is in this beautiful blue newly restored 1813 Federal style building.  I had read that their specialty is antique quilts and vintage reproduction fabric.  As I stepped inside, I was immediately greeted by a friendly employee and when I told her a bit about myself, she quickly took me to meet Mary Koval, the owner and renowned quilt expert. 

Mary was setting up in the back workroom for a group of ladies who were on their way, but she gladly spent some time explaining that she designs antique reproduction fabric that she uses to assemble quilt exhibits for museums and other venues all over the world. She is a lecturer on many quilt topics and is a leading source for many quilting publications. 

The walls of the shop display beautiful antique and reproduction quilts, the fabrics are smartly arranged and each corner of the store is filled with eye-catching displays.


While I was looking at fabric, David showed Mary a picture of the Lackey women working on Esther Jean Lackey’s mother’s unfinished quilt last Thanksgiving.  Mary commented that her upstairs quilters’ retreat quarters would be a perfect place for a ladies reunion quilting party.  It turns out the upstairs floors of the building have been beautifully remodeled into a common area, state of the art kitchen and bedrooms for 16.   With a huge sewing room down the hall, it makes for a perfect sewing getaway destination.  And with all the cute shops in town to explore, and the restaurants within walking distance, I am already hoping to plan an event with friends or family. 

Of course, I announced that I did I not need any fabric when I arrived, but I couldn’t resist a few cute antique patterns like these –


Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

September 15th, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

Jacket.aspx

All of my favorite things – smart characters, descriptions of exotic dishes, recipes, menus – come together in Kitchens of the Great Midwest.  Eva, the central character, is born in the first chapter and ages rapidly in subsequent chapters where she sometimes plays only a minor role.  Eva has a talent for food – knowing ingredients, putting together a meal, and even using food as a weapon.  I loved watching her grow into an enigmatic chef so popular people would pay thousands of dollars and endure years on a waiting list just to eat at one of her mysterious pop-up dinners.  The chapter titled “Bars” is all about those delicious 9 x 13 pan-baked creations and was the tastiest of the whole book for me.


The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida

September 4th, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

divert.aspx

This slim little novel is so fast paced, I almost finished it in a day.  Told entirely in second person, Vida’s narrator has her laptop and identification stolen while checking in to a hotel in Morocco.  After some wrangling with the local police, she accepts another woman’s ID and thus begins a series of events, new names and personalities so entangled it will leave “you” wondering who “you” are.   I listened to an interview with Vendetta Vida, who is Dave Eggers’ wife, and she said the book was prompted by a similar experience that she had with a stolen laptop that contained an unfinished manuscript.  She also said second person narration was the only way she could tell this story.  I was hooked from the opening scene and laughed aloud at the last line.  Highly recommend!


The Little Paris Bookshop

August 28th, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

parist.aspx

What a sweet little story, perfect for any bibliophile with an interest in romance.  Monsieur Perdu calls his floating bookstore barge a literary apothecary, and prides himself on his ability to match a book with a person’s current needs.  But his own soul is empty, and when he decides to leave his mooring and travel in search of some answers to old questions, the book takes off.  It is a charming novel, full of quirky characters and a few good book titles that might help with the longings of your own life.


A Man Called Ove

August 15th, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

ove.aspxHow I loved Ove.  He is as grumpy and grouchy as they come – I pictured Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt.  His wife Sonja, who friends were always grateful married him and made him manageable for some time, has just died.  He sees no reason to go on, and begins to plan a way to end his life.  But nosy, meddling neighbors keep finding ways to divert him from his goal, and through these interactions, the soft side of Ove is revealed.  Swedish author and blogger Frederik Backman has painted  a tender character who will stay with you long after the last episode – which is laugh out loud funny.  I agree with Booklist – “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” (Booklist, starred review).


The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus

July 17th, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)

un.aspx

When our former student and acclaimed author Salvatore Scibona mails a book to our house with a simple typewritten note enclosed “A book I love for friends I love”,  I set all other reading aside and dive in.  Scibona wrote this blurb for the back of the book –

A big, chewy novel written with comic panache and an infectious tenderness toward the blunders of its heroes. The Unfortunates is both a mirror on the income inequality of the current moment and a social novel in the old, plotty mode: voracious for detail and punctuated by gasp-inducing turns of fate. Its subjects are money and the people unfortunate enough to have it. Who knew the rich deserved so much to be pitied? (Salvatore Scibona, author of The End)

Sophie McManus‘ debut novel lives up to the New York Observer’s pronouncement “This may be the literary beach read of 2015.” At the center of the story is CeCe Somner, an aging matriarch whose excessive wealth cannot save her declining health. Diagnosed with a rare disease, she qualifies for a pharmaceutical trail she can only participate in if she moves from Somner’s Rest into Oak Park, one of those god-forsaken “homes”.   Her delusional son, George, is none too happy to be rid of her since it gives him more freedom to compose an opera that he believes will launch his fame. George neglects his job and his new-moneyed wife, Iris, until everything spins out of control. The potential darkness of the novel is lightened by McManus’ hilarious prose. I laughed out loud! In one passage George puts headphones on his mother so she can listen to his masterpiece for the first time, and when she removes them, she describes what she heard in a splendid Juvenalian tirade that is its own music. McManus is a talented word weaver. I empathized with no character and loved them all.

Perhaps the truest line in the book is buried in a beginning chapter where a minor character says, “We need books  . . . because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.”  Sophie McManus has capably created such a necessary book.


Language Arts by Stephanie Kallos

June 21st, 2015 | Posted by Lackey in My Reading Life - (0 Comments)



How does an English teacher avoid a novel titled Language Arts?  I certainly could not, especially since I have been big fan of Stephanie Kallos since reading Broken for You in 2005.  And, of course, this cover with its looping arcs is pretty intriguing – and representative.

Language Arts is an ambitious novel – one I almost felt she was not going to be able to pull off due to all its looping arcs.  The main character is Charles Marlow, a high school English teacher who attempts to show students how language will shape and change their lives.  Charlie is also the father of an autistic son, Cody, who never masters the use of language.  Cody, now 21, must be placed in a new adult residence.  Charlie is divorced from his wife, Allison, with whom he has little success in communicating.  During Art Therapy at the new home, Cody collaborates with Sister Georgia, an aging Italian nun who is losing her language, all of which is photographed by one of Charlie’s students who is working there on her senior Language Arts project.  Sound confusing?  It often is.   To further muddy the waters, the timeline of the novel bounces between the present and Charlie’s elementary school days, when he was placed in an experimental language arts program that resulted in him penning an award winning story that was a loosely veiled expose of his parents’ dysfunctional marriage.  Also, symbolically significant is the elementary school instruction Charlie received in the Palmer Handwriting Method and the ways it knit Charlie’s life together with a mentally challenged classmate of his named Dana.

At times the novel nearly fell apart for me.  But there were passages about language – how is serves and fails us as human beings – that salvaged the book for me.  Perhaps it is because my mother suffered from aphasia during her last years with Alzheimers.  Perhaps because I love language, and teaching literature.  Passages like this one make the book worth recommending:

“Memory—uncorrected, uncorroborated, and (by its very nature) unreliable—is what allows us to retroactively create the blueprints of our lives, because it is often impossible to make sense of our lives when we’re inside them, when the narratives are still unfolding: This can’t be happening. Why is this happening? Why is this happening now? Only by looking backward are we able to answer those questions, only through the assist of memory. And who knows how memory will answer? Who will it blame?”


 

Eighty-three year old Etta is full of life, but she has never seen the ocean!  So she decides to walk some 3,000 kilometers from Saskatchewan, Canada east to the sea.  She leaves a note on the kitchen table for her husband, Otto, stating “I will try to remember to come back”, and loads up provisions including a rifle and some chocolate before heading out.  It is Russell, life-long friend a neighbor to Otto, who eventually decides to set out after Etta.  The final title character, James, can only be described as a supernatural coyote who accompanies Etta along part of her journey.

 

This novel is all story, and as many of my favorite story tellers do, Hooper paints her landscape with the broad brush of magical realism.  I loved Etta and her feisty determination.  This novel is quirky and engaging.  Want to escape this summer?  Hike along with Etta and James.


Back in March, I got an Etsy Conversation notification from another Northeast Ohio entrepreneur who encouraged me to view her Kickstarter video and then get back to her if I was interested in sewing aprons for her soon-to-hit-the-streets vintage trailer bakery!  I know a great idea when I see one, and by the end of that day, I had a new business associate and friend, Shannon Keiber!  We worked together to select fabrics to compliment her logo and color scheme, I placed a huge fabric order and she gave me a down payment on 10 aprons that would be worn by her and her sales helpers, as well as be given out as rewards to her Kickstarter backers. 

We selected an adorable Tossed Trailers print fabric from Timeless Treasures for the apron skirts.  The pink background coordinates perfectly with the flowers in her Floured Apron logo.  The gingham in the logo is reflected in the bright blue Riley Blake fabric I ordered for the apron bodices and adjustable neck strap and ties.  Shannon liked the idea of using teal ric rac for accenting the deep functional pockets and apron waistlines.   Reminded of the old adage, “measure twice – cut once”, I measured about five times and did all sorts of mind-numbing calculations before I cut into the fabrics.  My other challenge was printing a simple black version of her  logo onto white fabric for a colorfast image that would withstand washings. 

Shannon understands branding and marketing.  She brings the knowledge she gained over twenty some years in corporate America together with her love for baking together in her new business venture.  Her Kickstarter goals were met, her custom vintage style trailer was built, and she is making her dreams come true by delivering “Homemade baked goods, straight from the heart!”  She uses high quality, local ingredients and bakes cupcakes, brownies, cookies, pies and breakfast pastries that are simple, beautiful and above all, delicious!

And, Shannon really loves aprons.  Check our her three part series from her blog here.  I was so pleased when she told me she had chosen me to make her aprons because she loved the many aprons I have available in my Etsy shop. After I had the 10 aprons made, we decided on a Starbucks about half way between our two homes as a meeting place.  I recognized her immediately because she was carrying a box of cupcakes (for me!).   

I felt an instant kinship with Shannon.  We sat over coffee and talked about our upcoming markets, problems with establishing fair pricing that also yielded profits, and the things that keep us awake at night. At that point, her trailer, which she named Rosie, was not finished.  She had debut dates lined up and I promised to keep in touch for progress updates.

I have to sing the praises of her product.  These chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache icing and fresh raspberries did not last long at our house, and even made a great breakfast the next morning with coffee in my new Floured Apron mug.

Since our first meeting, we have kept in touch.   The Floured Apron was a hit at its Cleveland Flea debut, made a local television morning show appearance, and I hear a Cleveland Magazine feature is upcoming.  Shannon said there has been enough interest in her apron that she would like to sell them, along with a few of my other aprons.

Just yesterday, I surprised Shannon at Aurora Farms where she was parked selling coffee, cupcakes, brownies and cookies.  I brought her an armload of aprons for her holiday weekend vending events.  And I finally got to see Rosie!  Bright blue and shiny white – you won’t be able to miss her this summer.

  

  

And as of today – there are aprons for sale!  Unfloured, one of a kind aprons, handmade and straight from the heart!