"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
“Young Lamar Jimmerson went to France in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Forces, serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope, and then later as a telephone switchboard operator at AEF headquarters in Chaumont. It was there on the banks of the Marne River that […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. From my last You Can’t Read That! post: Apparently it’s a widely-held belief in anti-gay Christian conservative circles that the government — particularly the jack-booted thugs who run public libraries and schools — foists pro-gay literature on young readers while […]
I started reading a thick paperback yesterday around noon … it looked to be a 400- to 500-pager … but it turned out to be written in blank verse, with just a few words per page. Including breaks for errands, dinner, and the Rachel Maddow Show, I was done by seven. The book was Crank […]
You Can’t Read That! is my new title for banned book reviews and news roundups. From a previous banned book news roundup: Conservative groups who believe in and fear the so-called gay agenda accuse the American Library Association of suppressing books with pro-hetereosexual themes. But 99% of books in libraries implicitly or explicitly endorse heterosexuality, […]
“The sun peers over the rim of the earth, casting its blaze across Bangkok. It rushes molten over the wrecked tower bones of the old Expansion and the gold-sheathed chedi of the city’s temples, engulfing them in light and heat. It ignites the sharp high roofs of the Grand Palace where the Child Queen lives […]
“Teachers won’t be able to model those skills if our schools and courts continue to muzzle them. But the same democratic imperative also demands that teachers responsibly restrict what they say, just as other professionals do.” That’s from a New York Times op-ed by Jonathan Zimmerman. Does it sound like he’s saying teachers need to […]
“If you were looking aside and mentally adding up the hours until the execution of a young killer, all that registered was something dark flashing by. But if you happened to be gazing directly at the window in question and you happened as well to be feeling unprecedentedly calm, four-tenths of a second was more […]
“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.” — M.T. Anderson, Feed Zero Station, by Amanda Hamm I mistakenly downloaded this to read on my Nook. Billed as a novella, it isn’t even a short story … more like a pitch for a story idea. A good […]