This post will be full of SPOILERS, so please stop here if you’d like to read the book. I’m teaching a fiction course this semester and to make life easy on my first leap into the forays of academia, I’m having my students read a few books I already know. This has proven to be both a good and bad idea (for me, not my students). On the good, revisiting “Forever” on an academic level has brought out so much of Hamill’s craft that I […]
I Was the Wrong Audience for this Book
One of my colleagues asked me to read this book along with him to help him prepare a presentation for his religions and sociology course, and I wanted to like it, for his sake and my own, but I was hands-down the absolute worst audience for this book. This is a volume for someone who’s coming in with no prior knowledge, or knows a little bit about a lot of different religions. I unfortunately know an iceberg’s worth of information on my own religion, and […]
“The House of Fiction Has Many Windows, But Only Two or Three Doors.”
It keeps surprising me that whenever I go looking for a book on writing, it’s much less a ‘how-to’ and much more a literary criticism of the Greats. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not what one expects when selecting a book called “How Fiction Works.” But Wood isn’t interested in telling his reader to go find a pen, write some words down and assess if they’re any good based on certain literary principles. Instead he presents us with what’s out there in the literary […]
Book exchange!!!
Thank you so much to bonnie for these awesome books! They’re going to be super helpful with ny TA position next semester!