about

Welcome to iron inklings. It’s just my little place to post thoughts mostly about books, but a few other things here and there. I’m a librarian and mom to a sweet little boy who’s just starting pre-school. I’m a recovering books snob and my reading tastes are really all over the place these days. Poetry is my passion, but I have read precious little of it these days. My son loves poetry, so I get to read some of it to him and we’ve been ending each night with “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” It’s a nice closing of the day. Needless to say, I read an enormous amount of picture books and easy readers.

Left to my own devices, I’d read mostly literary and historical fiction with a little YA fantasy thrown in, however, I’ve been participating in a genre study and work with some infectious genre lovers, so I have been exploring some avenues of fiction that are new to me. This has been a great deal of fun and I wish I had more time to spend reading so I could give adequate time to it all. I love going back to the classics and catching up on the ones I missed. I’m reading them with such different eyes these days.

In addition to reading, if I had spare time, I would be cleaning my house! Seriously, after my first taxonomy project in high school, I fell in love with anything that grows in the dirt. Though my gardens will never grace the cover of a magazine, they are wonders to me and bring me great joy. Obsessing over seed catalogs, planting and watching the tiny leaves push their way out of the dirt are so much better than TV. At least for me. But that’s just because I don’t have TV! Anyway, given time and money, I’d also love to travel. Instead I read books about other countries. Sometimes they make me want to visit  a place, sometimes they make me want to change the world.

Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to hear from you. You can leave me a comment or email me at ironinklings at yahoo dot com

The title of my blog comes from a poem by Eavan Boland called “Outside History.” It begins:

There are outsiders always. These stars – these iron inklings of an Irish January, whose light happened thousands of years before our pain did: They are, they have always been outside history.