I know we’re experiencing a kind of glut in dystopian fiction these days, but I do honestly enjoy the genre when it’s done well (my go-to examples are still always going to be Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy or Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which I am teaching this fall and SUPER excited about). I look for other examples by authors I haven’t read, and The Dead Lands was one such text. I’ve never read anything by Benjamin Percy, but one of my Facebook friends […]
That time Mary Robinette Kowal liked me on Goodreads.
I spent last year on a Mary Robinette Kowal bender with her Glamourist Histories series, and have spent all of 2015 waiting VERY IMPATIENTLY for the last book to come out this spring. Very impatiently. So when my library system *finally* ordered its copies, I greedily placed my hold and then waited AGAIN until I got my copy. And then of course, an enormous stack with earlier due dates, as well as my graduation, put that reading on hold again. With all this anticipation, this […]
A mind-bender of a short-story collection
FINALLY. I am all caught up with my reviews. Whew. I am exhausted, y’all. Reading is one thing, but having to write reviews is quite another. But hey, I have time to get working on the next set of books, right? I am very excited that I have some free time before I begin my next research project, so that means quality time with my library stack. Always a good thing. Labyrinths is a collection of short stories, essays, and parables by Jorge Luis Borges, […]
“Live every week like it’s Shark Week.” I will, Tracy Jordan. I will.
In the first season of 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan admonishes Kenneth the Page to “live every week like it’s Shark Week.” It’s an injunction that The Chancellor and I take very seriously. Shark Week is like a national holiday to us. My students have even suggested that I wear a GoPro the next time I watch Shark Week so that they can enjoy me watching it (um, never. I enjoy my sharks in private). This last weekend, I graduated school for the last time (no, […]
In defense of female ministers
I’ve not kept it secret that I am a person of faith. To be more specific, I am a Seventh-day Adventist, a Christian religion that is often categorized as Evangelical, drawing from both Old and New Testament for its doctrines (in short: we’re Christians, but we honor the Jewish Sabbath from the Old Testament). Every denomination has its issues, and mine is currently struggling with two major issues: gay marriage, and the ordination of female clergy. I fall on the “liberal” aspect in both regards […]
The love of a deceptive butterfly
I’ve been looking for a play to teach in my fall class, and I wanted something that wasn’t merely a classic Greek or Roman play or a very western-European-focused play such as an Ibsen. A little digging led me to David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly. While Hwang is an American playright, he purposefully focuses on deconstructing myths of the “Orient,” using Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, a true story of a disgraced French diplomat, and turning those myths on their head through a discussion of gender […]
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