Get Lost in Literature

I don't know, I think using the word 'your' might be cheating a little, but I had trouble coming up with a word for Y. So today I want to discuss genres. If you are unfamiliar with the word 'genre' it's a way of grouping works of literature, movies, music, and art together by subject or type. I feel like my reading habits are eclectic. I try read from multiple genres a year, but I do tend to gravitate toward Speculative Fiction more often than not. Speculative fiction is a genre, but it's also an umbrella term to cover the sub-genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror . I'd say I read fantasy the most, science fiction second, and horror the least of the three. It's odd to think of fantasy, sci-fi and horror as sub-genres, because all three have sub-genres of their own that I don't intend to detail because that could go on for a long time. There's also Non-Fiction which, like Speculative Fiction , can cover many mini subjects like Hist...

Xenophobia is the fear of that which is foreign or strange, usually against people but can be a culture or a place. It might sound weird to include a phobia of foreigners to a A-Z theme that is all about bookish discussions, but believe it or not, it is a popular plot device.  Xenophobia is why Halflings ( The Lord of the Rings ) don't leave the Shire and don't like unexpected guests, making a character like Frodo a standout. The many races of Middle Earth held ill-will toward each other and they needed to overcome prejudices to fight for their freedoms. Xenophobia is why everyone in the Stillness ( The Fifth Season ) hates Orogenes, forcing protagonists Essun, Damaya, and Syenite into their 'me against the world' roles. The bigotry that surrounds them like a suffocating blanket is what makes them such complex, even if lonely, characters. They're strong-willed, they're angry, and they are on a mission. In Black Woods Blue Sky , recluse Arthur is universally dis...

  In my last post, we discussed books as a vacation from reality, so today I want to talk about what makes it so easy to step from one location to another: worldbuilding.  Worldbuilding is exactly what it sounds like: using literature to design an imaginary world. A good book should have the ability to take you somewhere, but a good author makes sure that's a place worth going. Worldbuilding is a more obvious concept when it comes to fantasy and science fiction, but it should be present across all genres. Worldbuilding is a setting: mountains, deserts, or vast oceans, skyscrapers or quaint villages. But it's more than that. Is it simply enough to say someone is in a room, or do you want to know what the room looks like that that someone is in? It's the old adage of " show, don't tell. " Worldbuilding is culture. How do the characters interact socially with others, with economy, with the government? Is there religion, is there art? The more culture a character ...

We've all been there. We've all had a bad day or a moment at work or after a family squabble where we've thought, "Gosh darn it, I need a vacation." And wouldn't it be nice to just get up and go whenever the mood suited you? Some people do. For many people, reading is a form of escapism. When you open that book and start reading those pages you can be transported somewhere new and exciting. Even if you don't have time to sit down and binge a whole book, for whatever time you are reading you get to escape your reality. When I was a kid, I spent an extraordinary amount of time at Redwall Abbey, Hogwarts, and in the frigid Yukon with Buck. But as I grew older, the places I visited became more varied. I've visited Middle Earth, Cape Horn, the Stillness, San Francisco, Daevabad, and Chernobyl. I've met Prince Harry, Leah Remini, Addie LaRue, Malala, famed vampire hunter Abraham Lincoln, and Bella Swan. It's easy to get lost in the pages of a good bo...

No, not the operating system. Ubuntu is actually a philosophy originating in Africa, loosely translated into, "I am because we are." It's the idea that an individual's humanity comes from their relationship with society. I don't read a lot of philosophy. In fact, I think I've only read one book I would classify as philosophical and that was The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale which I read sort of on accident. Which is to say I liked the cover art. It's sort of a satirical take on what it means to be human from the perspective a chimpanzee. It's not a book for everyone as it's slow and perverse and a billion pages long. I'm not interested in talking about books that are strictly philosophical. I find them to be a little boring, but maybe that's because I haven't found the right one... More I want to talk about books that contain a specific philosophy, ubuntu, whether the author meant to include it or not. "If you w...

This post is for the book lovers who love what goes bump in the night. I feel like horror can be broken down into its subjects: ghosts, monsters, murderers, and psychological. There may be more out there, but personally I love a good supernatural horror, something that contains ghosts or monsters. And while I have an attraction to the paranormal, the human-on-human violence that takes place in murder-horror is too rich for my blood. As far as ghost stories go, I can recommend  The Summer of Night by Dan Simmons,  it is the first horror novel that truly scared me as I read it. Seriously, it contributed to a couple of sleepless nights. A group of kids go to war with an evil entity... There are a lot of people that compare it to Stephen King's It having never read It , I can't tell you whether that's an accurate comparison or not. There's also The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones , where on the anniversary of a terrible deed a group of friends fall prey to a veng...