While traditional novels and short stories are the things I always come back to eventually, I’ve spent a lot of time working in other storytelling and writing mediums. I wrote plays as part of my theater education, audio-dramas as part of a larger team, and, for a number of years, narrative video games. And while… Continue reading Do You Have Onscreen Dragon Money?
We did foster care respite for a short while. For the uninitiated, this is basically extended babysitting for foster kids. Now something you run unto a lot with foster agencies is that they're faith-based and ours was no exception. It was pretty common that any child entering the foster system, through this agency, that came… Continue reading The Adults at the Base of the Literacy Crisis
In talking about school books on TikTok, someone mentioned in a comment that one of the current strategies around teaching books is returning to a previously read novel years later and reevaluating it from an older perspective. That might be why some summer reading I was discussing for local high schoolers looked more like middle-grade… Continue reading That’s My Secret, Cap, I Didn’t Read the Book
In fourth grade one of the whole class (not pull-out group) required readings books was a novel called Finders Keepers by Emily Rodda. This is one of those books that sort of fundamentally changed me as a person, but I’ve not met anyone else who remembers reading it. Even people I went to elementary school… Continue reading How House of Seven Gables Almost Ruined Jr. High English Class
In honor of the new school year, I made a cheeky little video on TikTok about required summer reading, what my local school district required of its high schoolers, and how it compared to my own summer reading back during my school years. It opened this very interesting little conversation in the comments about other… Continue reading An English Class Case Study
Check the end for promos, free books, and special sales. SolarisStanislaw LemScience Fiction-1961 From Storygraph: "When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others examining the planet, Kelvin learns, are… Continue reading July Reads and Reviews
On Tik Tok (and occasionally some other reading groups) I talk a lot about my own experience reading classic science fiction and fantasy (mostly sci-fi). And I think sometimes that gives a false impression of age. But the reality is that a lot of the classic or vintage or generally older sci fi books I… Continue reading A Childhood of Science Fiction Classics
How do we then go about creating our little genre classic retinue? Because, surprisingly, this is a question you have to ask, sometimes.
Previously, I've touched on some of the benefits that come from reading classic books in your preferred genre. Sci-fi classics. Fantasy classics. Romance classics. Horror classics. Because society becomes more progressive through time, however, these older books are going to present outdated and obsolete societal views. Some to the point where they do start to… Continue reading Balancing the Problematic and the Emblematic in Classic Literature
It’s not uncommon for the hobbyist reader to completely abandon classics and more retro or vintage literature once they’ve moved on from reading for academic purposes. Why not? So many new books come out a year that just getting through all the new releases you’re interested in is a task unto itself. But then, on… Continue reading Why Read Genre Classics if they Come With So Many Problems?
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