Posts tagged as:

Literature

To Finish or Not to Finish?

June 27, 2011

At what point is it okay not to finish reading a book? Ten pages in? Fifty? This is a quandary I have been facing this week as I’ve worked my way through the opening chapters of a novel that, by all accounts, I should like. It has been well-received by critics. The topic is one [...]

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Literacy Rant: Closing Thoughts

May 13, 2011

So the task was simple. Pick five and only five books that would do two things: stand as a crash course in literature and encourage the reader to continue that education on his own. I’m pleased with the list and stand behind it, but there are a few random thoughts that occur to me. I’m [...]

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Crash Course in Literacy: Part 5

April 18, 2011

When I started this list, I mentioned that I had a reading order in mind for the books. It’s an order based on very subjective (and very arguable, I’m sure) feelings of ‘hard’ versus ‘easy’. Fahrenheit 451 is a great book but I consider it an ‘easy’ book. It’s fast paced, kind of fun, and [...]

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Crash Course in Literacy: Part 4

April 6, 2011

When my high school English teacher (shout out to Mr. Ted Eriksen) passed out copies of Lord of the Flies he told us it was “Probably the most carefully constructed novel in the English language.” That being a bold intellectual statement and me and my classmates being smart ass teenagers, we immediately and mockingly started [...]

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“Try to See It My Way” (Writers and Negative Capability)

October 13, 2010

Image by Getty Images via @daylife “The wise man questions the wisdom of others because he questions his own, the foolish man, because it is different from his own.” —Leo Stein, American art collector and critic In an 1817 letter to a friend, the poet John Keats describes one of the qualities that makes writers [...]

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