Friday reads

Some items you may want to read from recent online publications:

Salon carries an article, originally published in TeacherLove, by Dave Eggers, about a teacher who made a difference by encouraging him to be a writer. Eggers writes, “When a few instructors in college gently and not-so-gently tried to tell me I had no talent, I held Mr. Criche's words before me like a shield.” He also gives props to Lake Forest High School.

Sherman Alexie grapples with progress in this poem in Orion Magazine.

Maile Meloy recounts a deal with her father, to read ten classic novels in exchange for a ten-speed bike. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was 10, but I think that having all those books and sentences composting in my brain may have pushed me toward becoming a writer in the long run.” I like the image of books as compost over the span of our lives, turning over for air now and then in the backs of our brains.

Haus im Garten, Auguste Macke, 1914