I’m a relative latecomer to Neil Gaiman, but that’s made the journey all the more pleasurable for even getting there in the first place. I’ve read several novels, and am currently wanting some graphic novels in the mix. So it was an ideal time to start The Sandman series. I was intrigued by the premise, by Gaiman’s immense talent as a writer and storyteller, and by the merging of art and text. The first volume of The Sandman, titled Preludes and Nocturnes, introduces us to […]
Did Jack London secretly write this book? Or Katniss Everdeen?
I decided that my Composition I course this fall needed to have a new theme. My food units are getting aged, and thanks to Common Core curriculum in high schools, students are writing a lot about food before they get to college. Thus, I decided, why not dystopia? There is a lot to say about society, politics, culture, disease, natural disaster, technology, art, and warfare. So I’ve begun collating books about society, collapse, survival, and more. And that is why, when I stumbled across Bushcraft […]
An ironic question and a sweeping time period
I read Richard Flanagan’s most excellent Booker winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, last December, and I wanted to read more of his works. I have not read a lot of literature from ANZAC (that is, Australia-New Zealand Commonwealth), so I am interested in seeing what is out there. The Sound of One Hand Clapping takes place in Tasmania and features themes of immigration and identity, so I was curious to see how it compared to other works. The Sound of One Hand […]
The power of imagery and story
My friend K, who is specializing in short fiction in her doctoral work, suggested Season of Migration to the North as something I might be interested in rotating for my global literature courses. I don’t always find novellas satisfying, but sometimes they are handy when you try to fit in a lot of literature for your courses. Plus, in broadening my literary horizons beyond the Western canon, I am interested in the way writers have been translated into English and confront exotic “Othered” myths about […]
Make mine a double (cannonball) with this beautiful and wrenching book.
For the past four years, I’ve been teaching poetry as part of my social justice as creativity unit in Composition II. I’ve taught several different poets–including favorites Katie Ford, Marvin Bell, and Yusef Komunyakaa–but have also been turning to novels in verse as a means of making the poetry more approachable to young adult students. I taught an excerpt from Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming (and I will read the whole thing this CBR, for sure), Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out […]
Dances with Dragons, Vols. 1, 2, and 3
First, a disclaimer: I typically do not care to review an entire series at a stretch. Yet when a series flows into each other and there are enough similarities that warrant talking about a series as a unit, then it makes sense to complete a joint review. I’m a picky fantasy reader, as you all know by now. But my sister had reviewed A Natural History of Dragons and called it a novel of manners. Um, yes please. If something warrants a novel of manners […]
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