Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever. This book by Holly Black is the first in a new YA series, The Folk of the Air, set in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. I haven’t read anything by Ms Black previously, but I’ve been in a reading slump for a few months and this book looked promising when I saw it in the hot titles section at the library. The first […]
51: An intriguing play that riffs off Plato’s cave allegory
I’m developing a “new global literature” online course, which means lots of lovely reading! For each of the literature courses I have developed, I like to implement a variety of genres. Further, since this is global literature, I need to think about several nations or regions being represented that are not European or Western in focus. Finally, since this is “new” global literature, I decided that everything needed to be published after 9/11, as a starting point to thinking about how globalization changed. This is […]
Even when it’s about the women, it’s about the men.
Valley of the dolls is about three women and their path into and along stardom. Anne is a frigid woman from New Jersey who moves to New York and gets a job for a theatre-lawyer-guy. She gets proposed to immediately by a wealthy guy, but turns him down for an Englishman with glorious hair. He, in turn, dumps her because he’s an artist, and then Anne becomes a famous model for a make-up brand. Anne meets Neely O’Hara, back when they’re still poor. Neely can […]
A showgirl’s life
This is a book that may not be for everyone – there are issues of child sexual abuse, self mutilation, drug addiction and some domestic abuse. In saying that, it’s also a well written, powerful story of a young woman who has to battle her demons and come out of it into a better place. It’s also a story that has strong female friendship among the glitz and glamour of old Las Vegas in the 1960s, which Ms Church portrays very well. It begins with […]