I’ve never done an official reading challenge. To tell the truth, I’ve always been a bit of a snob about them. Reading challenges are for people who don’t read enough, right? And because I read as much as I possibly can and prefer reading to literally any other activity, how could I possibly need a…
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Peacocks and Doors
It has been my misfortune over the past couple of weeks to deal with some very large egos. I don’t know if was the full moon or the winter storms or what, but the peacocks have been spreading their feathers.* And whenever peacocks spread their feathers around me, for a minute (by which I mean…
Strength, Strategies, and A SINGLE SHARD
Over the weekend, I got to eat lunch with Linda Sue Park, winner of the 2002 Newbery Medal for A Single Shard, a novel about a potter’s apprentice in medieval Korea. We chatted about the prejudice historical fiction often faces in the market (it’s boring, it’s irrelevant, it won’t sell, blah, blah, blah…) and about…
While You Wait for A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
I am a bit sneaky when it comes to reading series. I like to wait until the entire series is out and then read it all at once. This helps me maintain a healthy level of dignity, in that I don’t have to go around drooling over the next installment and then go through withdrawal…
Of Pensieves and Primary Sources
Make no mistake, I love Harry Potter. I love the characters, I love the story, I love the Dickensian names and the wry Austenian observations on human (wizard) nature. There’s really only one element that makes me want to scream like an adolescent mandrake root. Professor Binns, the History of Magic teacher. Sometime during some…
“Kiss me, Hardy.”
My hidden talent is mimicry. I keep it hidden because it tends to get me into trouble, especially when I don’t mean to do it. I’m out of practice now, but there are still those times when I report, “So-and-so said,” and then proceed to say it with so-and-so’s exact inflections, not because I mean…
The Island Where Dreams Come True
In C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Book 3 in The Chronicles of Narnia (or Book 5 if you go by the newer editions, which I never do), King Caspian sails uncharted seas in search of the seven lords banished during the reign of his cruel uncle. Midway through their journey, the crew…
Terry Pratchett’s Take on Victorian London
UPDATE (1/28/2013): Dodger was just named a Printz Honor Book. The Michael L. Printz medal is awarded by the American Library Association for excellence in young adult fiction. When I opened Terry Pratchett’s 2012 novel Dodger, I was not expecting historical fiction. I was expecting Terry Pratchett to be amazing, of course, and I had…
“History Ain’t Nuthin’ But Memorization” (c. Spring Semester 2003)
Introduction to East Asian Civilization was one of the few courses I was forced, by scheduling constraints and graduation requirements, to take in a large, auditorium-style room with three hundred other students. As a 100-level class, it filled a gen ed requirement, not a major requirement. By then a committed history major, I spent most…