By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
This is a true Halloween story. It happened on Halloween when the youngest of my sons was still in middle school in Roseburg. My daughter, Margaret-Mary, had a cat she named Wazoo.
One rainy Halloween day, I was dressed in a coat and tie ready for a day in academia at Umpqua Community [...]
Nothing Left to Burn
A Memoir
By Jay Varner
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Hardbound $23.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
As a writing instructor I have often taught a course in writing a memoir in which one of the toughest lectures is presenting students with the challenge of writing about the bad things that happen in family dynamics. Some of [...]
Did Not Survive
A Zoo Mystery
By Ann Littlewood
Poisoned Pen Press
Hardcover $24.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
My favorite genre in fiction is mysteries and detective stories. In fact most of the fiction I read is in that category, but as an information seeker while most of my book reading is in the non-fiction category. In good fiction, however, if [...]
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs
Family, Friends and Faith in Small-Town Alaska
By Heather Lende
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Hardcover $22.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Heather Lende writes fluff, the kind of fluff that made her writing famous through her first book, “If You Lived Here, I’d know Your Name,” about her duties as a [...]
Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer
By John Grisham
Dutton Children’s Books
A division of Penguin Young Reader’s Group
Hardback $16.99
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
“Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer” is vintage Grisham, but with a Grisham twist. This may come as a surprise to all his adult fans, but this tinkerer with the written word did not write this book for you. [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
After having read a freelancer’s unsolicited manuscript sent to me for a critique, I think I will write this week’s column about the lowly comma, the most misused, abused, overused mark in the punctuation toolbox. The manuscript I read literally stuttered with commas.
There is an old internet story about feminism that Patricia [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
Twenty-five years ago, Anita Allen, then administrator of Linus Oakes Retirement Center, in Roseburg, Ore. asked me to contribute one of my weekly columns to a time capsule that was to be sealed and buried on the premises. On Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010, the time capsule was opened and among the hundreds [...]
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elderstatesman
It may be just my male psyche, but I feel trapped every time I try to use a coupon to make a purchase. My wife, herself a coupon queen, says it is because I don’t read the fine print. It happened to me this past weekend at one of those mega stores [...]
Discovering Main Street
Travel Adventures in Small Towns of the Northwest
By Foster Church
OSU Press
Paperback $18.95
By BILL DUNCAN
The News-Review
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Foster Church, a former travel writer for The Oregonian, by his own admission culled the contents of this book from columns he wrote for the Portland daily newspaper.
“The intent,” he writes, “was to visit small [...]
