I'm Going to Keep this Short

stories worth telling and an occasional deep thought

  • The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

    I don’t even remember how many years ago I read The Shadow of the Wind for the first time, but I saw it recently at a bookstore, in the classics section, and I thought, “Ah, I loved that.” It turns out my reading tastes have definitely matured since then. I remember thinking it was an… Read more

  • King by Jonathan Eig

    When I watched his “I Have a Dream” speech again this year on MLK day, I realized how far our society is from the utopia that Martin Luther King Jr talked about on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that day. Actually, it’s more than far, because nobody even wants that dream society he spoke… Read more

  • Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

    I’ll be honest with you.. there were moments during the pandemic that were the happiest of my life, too. My stories are not even close to interesting, but I gathered my kids around me and sometimes I shared them. I never dated a man who later became a movie star, though I was related to… Read more

  • Ten Thousand Tries by Amy Makechnie

    There are two reasons why you should disregard this review:1) The 2nd most effective way to torture me is to put me in front of a soccer game and tell me I have to watch it. It turns out that it’s equally torturous to make me read a book about soccer.2) I am not the… Read more

  • A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

    At 115 chapters, this may be the most appropriately titled book ever and I will admit to accidentally losing my place a few times. I will not, however, criticize Nelson Mandela for not being a better writer (especially since he didn’t write, but dictated–as I learned in the interview with the co-writer at the end… Read more

  • Stealing from the Table

    I forgot the brown sugar. Looking back, I see exactly how it happened. Standing in front of the brown sugar, I looked to the left in the gluten-free section to see if there were any gluten-free cake mixes. There were not. I moved on. (Of course, that doesn’t explain how, when I reviewed my list… Read more

Hi! I’m Rachel and I’m a writer.

I started writing when I was 10 years old with my short story “The Worst Day of My Life.” My passion for the written word impelled me to earn a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1994. Since then, my primary focus has been inspiring a love of language in my kids while also keeping a much loved family record and writing some killer Christmas letters and a few highly prized school absence excuses.

I currently spend my time doing whatever I want, maintaining relationships with a hierarchy of cats and, on occasion, writing a little bit.

Blog at WordPress.com.

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