It’s a good time to be a reader. Social media allows book lovers all over the world to swarm together and swap opinions and recommendations, with virtual communities forming over a shared love of literature. New releases are waited on anxiously in comment threads, and forget waiting for a bookstore to open to get the next book in a series, Amazon will ship it to … Continue reading Harry Potter and the Death of Literature
Near my apartment there is a cemetery sandwiched between the river and a main road. If you walk long enough hugging the path near the river you will see a gravestone partially obscured by flowers. If you push aside the leaves, you find a black and white picture of a young couple smiling warmly at the camera. Below, it states that the man was killed … Continue reading Good Literature Is Not Self Help: A Critique of ‘The Alchemist’
The most oft-repeated piece of writing advice is, of course, show, don’t tell. There are articles all over the internet of varying degrees of accuracy explaining what exactly this means and how to put it into practice in your own writing. To save you the trouble of googling it and squinting angrily at the plethora of almost-but-not-quite good advice out there, here’s a basic explanation … Continue reading The Reality of ‘Show, Don’t Tell’
The Giver is the book that got me into reading. Oh sure, I had read lots of books before, but they were always just stories. Stuff happened until there was no more book left to read and you moved on without a lot of thought into what it all meant. The Giver was different. I remember being entranced by the story in the 7th grade, … Continue reading Why ‘The Giver’ Is a Great Teen Novel
As a teen librarian, it’s my duty to be as unbiased and inclusive as possible. A collection blossoming with diversity, difficulty, and depth is important for any patron, but it’s especially important for youth. The current Young Adult (YA) market provides me with a variety of deep and diverse pieces of literature. Books of any kind help answer questions of self discovery, and what’s even … Continue reading Relevant Reads: Books for Misfits
