A Break from the Heat
Posted On Aug 8 2007My wife and I just decided that we would rather live without heat than air conditioning. We decided this after living for four days without it, during the hottest week of the year in Raleigh. A mixture of bad luck and some repairman incompetence made for a very long weekend. I remember when I first started at NC State, I jokingly asked one of the older staff why everyone in N.C. walked so slow. She replied—quite wisely—that you can separate North Carolinians into two camps: those who lived here before air conditioning and those who moved here after it became …
Books More Digital
Posted On Mar 28 2007I’ve always had a hard time explaining my position on e-books. Some of my esteemed colleagues are quick to point out the minor dent that e-books have made in overall book sales in this country and others. But when I started evangelizing about e-books back in the late 1990s, we were still talking about what I call the “curl-up factor.” I grew so tired of hearing people complain about not wanting to curl up with an e-book, or the inability to take an e-book to the beach, that as soon as I read either phrase in e-book commentary, I simply …
Children’s (e)Book Week
Posted On Nov 17 2006I did something really radical for Children’s Book Week this year–I read a book to a group of children! It was my second time being invited to Olds Elementary in Raleigh, and with no offense to my Libraryland colleagues, it was once again one of the most rewarding speaking engagements of my career. I think I have even hit upon a recipe for success for talking to the kids in Mrs. Gordon’s media center (I still wish they would call it a library). I talk about being a writer, about being a reader. I tell them that if you can …