I’m gearing my Composition I course this semester around the theme of Dystopia. I’m really excited for several reasons: dystopia interests me; I’ve never taught about dystopia and dystopian subjects; and I’ve never geared a composition course around a single theme. I’ve taught various themes for various papers, but I like the idea of building knowledge throughout an entire semester. A brief search on dystopia led me to Kate Brown’s book, which I hoped would be useful for me. Brown, a professor of history, wrote […]
Lilli, Greta and Einar
Like The Aviator’s Wife, The Danish Girl is based on real people and real events but is a fictional account of what really happened. Einar Wegener was an artist, who in 1920s Denmark, leads a simple life with his wife, Greta, who is also an artist. One day Greta asks her husband to sit in for a portrait when her female model has to cancel. Although Einar is a bit reluctant, he puts on the pantyhose & ladies shoes and steps into the beginning of […]
Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump
I read Benjamin’s Alice Have I Been a few years ago. In that one, she creates a novel around the young lady who supposedly inspired Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t really like it very much, but I’d heard that The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb was worth a shot, so I grabbed it when I saw it at Half Price Books. I’m glad I did — it was a good story with a fascinating cast. “That’s just it, don’t you see? I don’t want to be taken […]
More than any other I’ve reviewed, I recommend this.
I can’t imagine that I’ll read a more important book this year. The heightened tensions throughout the country following the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and so many others (just so many) has made race perhaps the defining issue of our times. But it’s impossible to say this is surprising or new for anyone who’s been paying attention. What is going on now has been a continual flashpoint in our nation’s history; at times it’s been relegated to […]
Two parts Last of the Mohicans and one part Outlander
I chose the least embarrassing cover I could find to use for this review of Surrender (2006) by Pamela Clare. The plain, bare chest seemed a little less ridiculous than my other options. NPR’s list of 100 Swoon-Worthy romances reminded me that I hadn’t read a good romance in quite some time. Pamela Clare’s I-Team series made the list under the romantic suspense category, but Surrender was the only Pamela Clare book I could get immediately from the library. So I found myself reading an old-school romance […]
Wall to wall tragedy, with nary a lasagna to be found.
Apart from The Emperor and the Assassin, this is a different beast from the other biographies I’ve been reading. Dispensing with the straight telling of James Garfield’s life, Candice Millard instead paints the portrait of an era. Taking place between the war that sundered the nation and the dawn of the new century, the era in which Garfield rose to prominence was nothing if not propitious. It was a time for momentous change and novel invention. The light bulb and the telephone came to prominence. […]
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