Really loving spending time reading Louise M. Rosenblatt’s thoughts on reading. Reading about her and all that she accomplished in her 100 years is likewise inspiring. Also who knew there was a Reading Hall of Fame? www.readinghalloffame.org/louise-rosen...
“The same text will have a very different meaning and value to us at different times or under different circumstances. Some state of mind, a worry, a temperamental bias, or a contemporary social crisis may make us either especially receptive or impervious to what the work offers.”
Sad to hear Hampshire is closing. Marlboro College, my own alma mater, closed its campus in Vermont and moved the program to Emerson after the pandemic. It was a seismic decision for alums.
“But no one can read a poem for us. The reader of the poem must have the experience himself.”
Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration
Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration
of the text.”
This copy also has lots of marginalia.
“The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physical condition. The many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the peculiar contribution
Reading an old bound library copy of Louise M. Rosenblatt’s 1938 LITERATURE AS EXPLORATION. Primarily about teaching literature it is also about reading and provides excellent insight into how and why we all read a different book.
I love the genre of essay that comes when a writer writes about when and how a particular book found them and how it changed them. Here's my old friend and colleague Peter Orner on Absalom, Absalom!
Locus needs your help! Donate what you can this morning to help them make their deadline. They are such a vital resource for science fiction and fantasy writers, reviewers, publishers and fans.
Romantasy panel with Amanda Cherry, Kendare Blake and Jasmine Silvera
Romantasy panel
Norwescon panel But is it a Romantasy? @amandacherry.bsky.social @kendareblake.bsky.social
HR 7661, the Federal book banning bill, is unfortunately still alive. Please call your reps and say NO ON HR 7661! You can read the bill's full text here and see if your Congressperson is one of the 19 co-sponsors: www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...
Ink to Film podcast live recording with Ursula Vernon aka T. Kingfisher
Norwescon @tkingfisher.com & @inktofilm.bsky.social
Kate Ristau, Remy Nakamura, Erin M Evans, Peter Adrian Behravesh, Ben Thompson
Shiv Ramdas, Tegan Moore, Brenda Cooper
Norwescon panels on authenticity and myth
HOPEFUL MONSTERS is one of my favorite novels and much of it and Mosley’s other writing was a reckoning with having a fascist father.
57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals.
And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked.
And then the DEI office was killed.
And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.
Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
Just read LOST LAMBS by Madeline Cash, a quirky debut about an imploding family. The overall tone reminded me of Barbara Gowdy’s MR. SANDMAN, a novel I always meant to read that is hard to find these days. Anyone read both? Curious if I am correct about this read-alike hunch!
This.
I think about this a lot.
Site's been down for a couple of days due to a maintenance snafu but it's back up and we're about 50% of the way to the awards funding goal!
ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/support/
Wait, Friday March 13th?
Didn't we already have a Friday the 13th? I looked over the calendar year and there's a Friday the 13th in November as well.
It's numbers and stuff, it could be nothing. It could also be everything: Make what you will of it.
I met an author at a publisher party who did not consider their clearly spec fic book genre. “It’s really about…” as though SFF books aren’t also about grief, memory, desire, etc. It made me sad that they thought it was okay to dismiss other books in the tradition they were writing in.
As a readers' advisor I talk often with students and colleagues about how our ideas about genres are not always our own--biases are societally created and reinforced. People think they "don't like" fantasy or romance based on someone else's stray opinion or because they tried one 10 years ago.
But as @mollytempleton.com points out, we still do not have genre parity. Major literary awards still ignore anything "too" genre. This is why we still need awards for science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and romance. They don't get the same coverage or consideration. Snobbery is not dead.
The other operating assumption with genre, I find, is that "literary" fiction is saying something about major themes but somehow if it's horror or science fiction those same themes are ignored or downplayed...every work is saying something so why do we privilege litfic's voice on the human condition
All to say, genre matters but I also wish we could be more embracing of the ways different modes of storytelling work, what their strengths and weaknesses truly embody. Literary fiction gets more of a "pass," its assumptions and omissions are forgiven in a way that genre is not afforded.
A related one is that the modern world has become just so damned weird; if a novel accurately describing 2019 had been published in the 80s, it would have been considered satire. Many people have said that contemporary realism isn’t up to the task of depicting contemporary reality..."
Ted Chiang touches on why SFF has more verisimiltude with our lives: "I think there are a couple reasons that science fiction is more respectable now: one is that we are living such in a technologically saturated world that any fiction ignoring the role of technology in our lives feels out of touch.
In @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social's latest book she pointed this out: "and most of the science fiction of my youth seemed to find it easier to imagine intergalactic colonialism than women's equality on earth. But others imagined many kinds of equality and fought to make them a reality."
