Get Lost in Literature

  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...

 Short stories are stories usually designed to be read in one sitting, unlike novels which are usually read over a period of time. While some people consider the short story to be its own genre, I feel that's an oversimplification of a sometimes-overlooked style of storytelling. Short stories can be about horror, love, sci-fi, or just about anything else, so how can they be a genre on their own? I'd say it's more accurate to describe the short story as a style of writing. Although the definition of what a short story is, is subject for debate. Some think it should have a beginning, climax, and end just like a novel, while others think it was meant to start somewhere in the middle. Some argue that a short story should be plot driven while others say it should be character driven. Authors who write them tend to pick options from above based on what they prefer and as long as the story is suitably short, it still qualifies as a short story. My favorite short story author of al...

Retellings are novels that are based on old classics or fairytales, rewritten from a fresh perspective and/or set in a new or modern world.  I've read a lot of retellings over the years but I admit, that most of them were written by Gregory Maguire, including one of my favorite books and his most popular one, Wicked . For those of you who don't know, Wicked is the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West starting from her conception to her last moments. I found it to be surprisingly detailed and richly imagined as if Gregory Maguire wanted to live in Oz himself. Another retelling I want to draw attention to is What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. The story retells one of my favorite short stories, Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Kingfisher's imagery completely and accurately sets the tone for this gothic novella that follows a retired soldier unraveling the mystery of her friends' declining health. If fairytales are your thing, A Curse So Dar...