Category Archives: reviews

The Nun’s Story

Posted on March 29, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

I just finished reading The Nun’s Story by Kathryn Hulme. It is really good. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in why someone might choose to enter a religious order and how the discipline of religious life … Continue reading →

Posted in Benedictine monastery, religion, reviews | 5 Comments

Chinua Achebe

Posted on March 23, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

If I were making my desert island list of fiction, my top four would be, in no particular order, Bleak House, My Antonia, Middlemarch and Things Fall Apart. I initially read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe to prepare for an assignment teaching … Continue reading →

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The Women

Posted on February 16, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

My last semester of college, in 1986, I took a course on American women poets that had a profound effect on me– as a writer and as a reader. The few poets I’d been introduced to by the more traditional … Continue reading →

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The New Old Rockabilly

Posted on January 20, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

When I lived in Long Beach, California in the early 2000s, I was determined to walk to as many services as possible. When it was time for a haircut, I stopped in at a little bungalow on Redondo Avenue run by two … Continue reading →

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The New European Films

Posted on January 17, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

After one of our airport runs at Christmas time, we managed to go see the French film Rust and Bone at the Uptown in Minneapolis. The film, though far from perfect, has two great things going for it: Marion Cotillard … Continue reading →

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Zero Dark Thirty

Posted on January 3, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

We always watch a slew of movies during the holidays, and this year was no exception. Most of the films we saw were sort of lackluster. The only one that really took me by surprise was Zero Dark Thirty by … Continue reading →

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New Year’s with Fred

Posted on January 1, 2013 by susanmsink@gmail.com

For me, New Year’s Eve means one thing: Fred Astaire. I don’t know if this is the experience of most girls who grew up babysitting in the Chicago suburbs in the 1970s, but for me the most magical part of … Continue reading →

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Self-Publishing part 2, the publicity edition

Posted on November 25, 2012 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Today is a big day at my house. My book, Habits, a collection of 100-word stories about nuns, is receiving major publicity this weekend. The article written by Frank Lee for the  St. Cloud Times that appeared last weekend was picked … Continue reading →

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Playing the Building by David Byrne

Posted on November 19, 2012 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Saturday we celebrated the start of the holiday season with a cultural outing to Minneapolis. We started at our usual breakfast place, Moose and Sadie’s, whcih always makes me feel like I’m in Chicago. Great cornmeal pancake with rhubarb sauce … Continue reading →

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Searching for Sugar Man and finding Jim Croce

Posted on November 2, 2012 by susanmsink@gmail.com

Probably one of the most important early music memories I have is of Jim Croce’s death. In 1973, just as his career was taking off, he died in a plane crash in Louisiana. I was nine years old, and my father … Continue reading →

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