"But in civil strife, even villains rise to fame." ~ Plutarch
Scary Stories Treasury: Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen GammellI missed this collection of revamped urban legends and folk myths when I was a kid. I went from Godzilla in kindergarten,…
Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power: Sady Doyle I gulped this down in one sitting, so I’ll have to come back to it…
I had wanted to start reading Italo Calvino, but wasn’t sure where to start. I found out that my wife had Invisible Cities, so I jumped in there. Cities easily…
One way I disappointed students was not reading one of their favorite books. This was certainly not the only way I disappointed students, but not having read S. E. Hinton’s…
I wrote recently about my initial experiences with The Confessions. Finished sometime around 400 AD, it’s an early version of the memoir, particularly the confessional and spiritual quest genres, though…
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1971), a sci-fi film full of slow poetry, led me to the author Stanislaw Lem, whose book inspired it. Since I only had the film to go…
While finishing the last week of the 2018 academic year, the family got some form of stomach virus that started last week. Since that cleared up, we’ve been able to…
An overheard conversation between bath and bedtime: 6YO: “Ciao”…”Ciao” means…uh…”Ciao” means “hello” and “goodbye” in…in… Amy: Italian. 6YO: In Italian. 4YO: (clomps in on cast) ¡Hola, Big Dogs! Despite a…
