fiction

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed Review (Spoiler Free)

The Nowhere Girls is an incredible story of many voices fighting back against a covered up sexual assault. An essential read for the #metoo movement.

Bibliomancy for Beginners s.6 e.2: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

For episode two of this new season, we’re keeping the OwnVoices theme with this one! I’ve wanted to read this since the second it came out, but grad school is hard guys. I figured it fit the theme perfectly and this way I’d make everyone read it! Great idea, past me.

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All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely Review

One of the best books I’ve read for school this year so far. If you haven’t read this yet, you need to. This dual narrative about the white and African-American experience with police brutality is so right now and necessary.

Massive School Book Haul + Mini Reviews

Interested in what I read for school last year? Here are all my physical books, and some mini reviews of the ones you might not know about!

I have no idea what happened when I uploaded this, but the off audio will stop around the 1 minute mark so hang in there!

I’m Currently Reading Too Much, Please Help!

I am currently reading too many things, and I can’t finish a one. Some of them are harder to finish by myself, like my story time books with Michaela, but some of these are just plain old my fault. Also, Name of the Wind is a REALLY LONG AUDIOBOOK, OKAY?

Top 5 Books of 2016

It’s finally time to get down to this wrap up stuff. 2016 wasn’t that great of a reading year, overall, though I did read 80 books. I felt like a lot of it was meh, but there were 5 that really stood out. They were a super mix of books, really representing the weird and new turns that my reading was taking me. I’m starting to read a lot wider and broader, and consistently stuff I didn’t think I’d ever enjoy. Let’s take a look at my list!

Bibliomancy for Beginners – Spooksgiving: Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

So remember when we said we were going to do a Halloween special? Well. It took us until about, oh, Black Friday to actually get this done. It’s always time for weird vampire sort-of-horror, right? Listen. I’m out of excuses, okay? Life is hard, but we love books. This really wasn’t my favorite, even if Michaela and Taylor liked it. HOWEVER, this is a really awesome episode because this book may not have been that good (to me) but it stimulated A LOT of really awesome discussion of themes and characters. We got so into it we almost forgot to stop. It was worth the wait!

Perusing Poetics: End of the Poetics Journey

I started out this blog talking about the two different parts of me, and how they work together. I’m going to end it by talking about how they stand apart. Granted, I’m going to be focusing more on my Writing major, just because the Poetics is a Writing Department class, but trust me when I say that the point I’m about to make is applicable to my English major too.

Yes, this post is required as a final project. Yes, there are question guidelines. I’m about to do a very odd thing and copy them out for you (sorry Professor. I swear there’s a reason for this):

  1. What do you make and is it similar in any way to the art practices we’ve read and/or talked about in class?
  2. Why do you make it, and do you see your ideas aligning with or being similar to the “why” of anyone we have read and/or talked about in class?
  3. What is the relationship of language to what you make, and is this relationship in any way similar to anyone we have read and/or talked about in class?

Using your digital archive and ideas, address

  1. What are your influences and how have they influenced what you have made up to this point? Who or what do you admire in your field, and why? (Use videos, images, other archives, etc.)
  2. What do you aspire to create, and what have you learned or encountered in class (if anything) that may affect your processes going forward? (Note: this can be a negative effect. That is, “Now that I’ve seen how horribly wrong thing XYZ can go, I want to avoid that route…)
  3. What was the most influential/important reading and/or concept to your own processes of making?

You know what I’m absolutely sick of? Realizing there are two ways I want to answer these questions. Then realizing that one of them is just another story I’m afraid to tell.

“What I mean is that within the University there could exist a relationship with word, language, thought, tradition, and power that might run counter to the relationship a poet might want to have with word, language, thought, tradition and power.” – Sarah Vap, End of The Sentimental Journey

Recently, in my Renaissance Literature class, the professor asked us what we were going to be reading over the summer. My answer would have been Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses. But I didn’t answer, because people starting saying “Milton” or “Absalom, Absalom.” My answer didn’t seem like it fit.

So, today, when I answer these questions, I’m not going to do any of us the disservice of lying or telling you half-truths. I’m going to tell you BOTH truths. I’m going to answer you from the

Academic

and from the

Personal

Bear with me.

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