I’ve been on a quest to read more current young adult literature to augment the classic literature I hand out in class. Basically, I need to find more modern and contemporary pieces that I can recommend that are outside of the typical “classic literature” cannon. So I turned to reading my way through the Printz awards. Many of the well-known young adult authors got their starts from the promotion of this award and I haven’t read a book from this list that I didn’t like. […]
If I Ever Hear the Word Spartan Again….
I sometimes get these crazy ideas in my head. So far they haven’t killed me. Yet. One of the craziest I’ve had was to run the Tough Mudder race in Michigan in July 2014. Yeah. I’m still wondering what drove me to that decision. Especially since I didn’t really do much to train. But the idea of pushing myself to be the best has always been part of who I am. Had I gone to a public high school and/or college I would’ve tried out […]
A Murder Mystery, Alternative History, and a Strong Dose of Yiddish
Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union has been on my to-read list for a while now. I finally picked it up when I came across it browsing for another book. I decided, what the hey, why not read it now? I wasn’t sure what to expect because the summaries on the book were somewhat vague, but I was interested in the story because it’s an alternative history whodunnit murder mystery. In this world, the United States created a Federal district in Sitka, Alaska to house […]
Just Another Reason Why Legislators Shouldn’t be Educators
I’ve been working my way through Kelly Gallagher’s cannon and this is my latest read, Readicide: How Schools are Killing reading and What You Can do about It. It’s a great analysis of the reasons why reading scores have fallen even though a lot of legislation has gone into trying to make the U.S. more competitive on the global education scale. In fact, much of Gallagher’s reasons harmonizes with two books I’ve already read and reviewed, so it wasn’t too much of a shock the […]
Caressing, Ravishing, and Anti-Slavery sentiments, Or Behn be Crazy
I first heard about Oroonoko by Aphra Behn from my wife. She’s a British Literature guru and recommended this work to me when I asked for a piece that was from the Restoration period and written by a woman. I’ve picked it up a few times over the summer, but I just didn’t think I’d like it. I was wrong. The opening was slow, but then it all hits the fan. Oroonoko is a prince in what is today Ghana and he falls in love […]
A Very Academic Look at Why Reading is Pleasurable
As part of my quest to read 52 books, I’ve been stalking my library’s “New Books” section and adding titles that catch my attention to my ever-expanding to-read list. This book was in the non-fiction section, one that I had tended to ignore until lately, and the title caught my attention. I at first thought it was going to be a memoir or a personal account of books that had affected her. I was both right and wrong. Wendy Lesser’s Why I Read: The Serious […]
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