Fall is unequivocally here, on the calendar and in the air. Daytime highs are comfortably lower, nights are longer and the primary religion here has changed to college football. The leaves are just beginning to turn and fall but there are some early spots of color. Everything is changing along with the books we’re choosing – there’s nothing quite like autumn reading. Perhaps it comes from the years we...
Teachers tell us we have to study the classics in order to understand literary forms. For tragedy, we look at the works of Shakespeare and the Greeks; for comedy, we read Wilde and Shaw. Fantasy readers get acquainted with Tolkein and SF fans get a background of Verne, Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke before moving on to the contemporary writers. All of this sounds like a waste of time to the student who equates R...
People who read often get overwhelmed when they start to think about writing. A complete book is the result of such a long, massive effort that most would-be writers get discouraged and quit long before they do a lot of sustained writing. I understand that. I never knew how or why successful authors developed the story-telling tempo that could pull me so completely into a book until one of my English professors g...
Summer is complete again, for all intents and purposes, and school is back in session. People return to class schedules and assignments, semester projects and extracurricular activities and since school is such an important part of our lives, it’s not surprising that it serves as the setting for many books. However,no story captured the American teacher’s perspective of that universe quite like Up the Down S...
This is how book friendships start: Two people meet in line at the bookstore or at some author’s appearance or on-line a book-friendly website and within twenty minutes they are best friends, comparing notes about favorite stories and characters like they’ve known each other for ages. Paperbacks and contact info are traded and they walk off together like the last scene in Casablanca, saying “I think this is the b...