Random Connect Points:
Reba's Stories

Two admissions… First, I admit I will judge a book by its cover. “Dog Medicine” by Julie Barton had me at the full face photo of a beautiful Golden Retriever named Bunker. I wasn’t familiar with this writer or the story she told, but when the book popped up on my Amazon list of suggested books, I quickly hit “purchase” for my Kindle app. Second, I admit I later bought a second copy of the book in hardback. The Kindle version is hard to mark up, scribble on and turn down pages. The highest compliment I can pay a book is to buy the hardback to keep, to mark up, to turn down page corners, to return to read the passages that mean something to me. The hardback of “Dog Medicine” now sits by my bed with dog-eared pages, yellow highlighting of "turns of phrases," and sticky notes scribbled with ideas that I want to write about at some point. I read this beautifully written memoir one cold rainy week-end with my big goofy golden retriever tucked up under my feet. She doesn...

I’m a word nerd. I admit it. I recently bought the new edition of the Elements of Style not only because the clever artwork on the cover caught my eye, but also because I love the writing in it. I anticipate May like Christmas every year because it’s the release of the updated AP Stylebook. My reading stack at home includes books like Edit Yourself; Naked, Drunk and Writing; Woe is I; Bird by Bird; Writing Down the Bones; and Eat Shoots and Leaves. I’m really proud of the fact my 11th grade grammar book still has a place on my bookshelf. So it isn’t surprising that I sometimes find myself seeing life as a series of punctuation marks. Take a look at a few examples: Parentheses – Sets words off from the rest of the sentence with the intention of giving additional detail or meaning. The sentence might make grammatical sense without the words in parentheses, but those words help the reader understand something better. A parentheses inserted into life is a time set off to gain...