I’ve spent the last semester encouraging non-readers to enjoy and engage with literature. I find it difficult to explain why reading is important. It’s something to which I’ve always applied inherent value. How does one inspire an interest in reading? It doesn’t necessarily have to be Chaucer or Austen or Eugenides. In fact, most people…
Category: Books
Let Mark Twain Love You
This morning, one of the first things that happened when I got out of bed was this: I discovered that Alan Rickman died. From cancer. At age 69. It reminded me of a day earlier this week, when one of the first things that happened when I got out of bed was this: I discovered…
Gothic Blue Book: The Revenge Edition
It’s out now. Gothic Blue Book: The Revenge Edition from Burial Day Books. Including stories from (in addition to yours truly) Chad P. Brown, cheeky librarian Tara Cleves, 18th Century British ne’er-do-well Phil Hickes, Emma Hinge, Horror Writers Association member K. Trap Jones, Odyssey Award winner Daniel Kraus, Bellevue patron David Massengill, Pushcart Prize winner Carl Palmer, collection editors…
The Graduate Part II: Acoustic Boogaloo
See, it’s not electric because I have no money to pay the electric bill. Get it? Ha ha! Ha… The faculty of the SAIC writing department got us all graduation gifts! Ain’t it sweet? We definitely didn’t get those in undergrad (though, to be fair, at U-Iowa I think there were about 5,000 students in…
Happy Banned Book Week
Stick it to the man. Read a banned book.Title link goes to the American Library Association’s list of the top 100 banned/challenged books. How many have you read? These are the one’s I’ve covered: Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling (I read the first one and was bored out of my skull the entire time.) The…
Rednecks on C-SPAN
It’s kind of surreal to hear a guy call in to Capital News Today and drawl that we should have tens of thousands of Marines down at the U.S.-Mexico boarder at all times and arm those Marines with machine guns. Just finished Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. It was killer (heh heh heh). Now I’ve started…
Librarians and Library Cards
I can’t get a library card because they want me to show them a bill that has my address on it. The bill has to be dated within the past 30 days. The problem with this is that no one mails out paper bills anymore. Everything’s done online. So I guess I don’t get to…
DANGER KEEP OFF THE TRACKS
It’s time to come clean. I’ve never understood the appeal of pony play. Read an article in the Red Eye about a group that sponsored a poll to find out what’s cool (the act of which, the writer of the article astutely pointed out, is inherently uncool). Even the word ‘cool’ itself seems pretty passé….
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