Diverse Reading: Why You Should Not Choose Protagonists Who Look Like You

People ask online all the time, “I’m looking for book recommendations featuring a protagonist that- (fill in the blank) is homosexual, is a man, is a strong female, is a minority, is asexual, is a redhead, is a single parent, etc. etc.” It’s even better when readers ask for these roles in their favorite genre.Continue

History Repeats Itself: Yellow Journalism in a “Modern” Age

Yellow journalism is a term that describes the sensationalist, money-generating “news” of what was supposed to be a by-gone era: 1895-1898. As we’ve seen in the recent presidential election, yellow journalism hasn’t gone away, it’s just become digitized. Today we know it as “fake news” or “click-bait”, and its only purpose is to entice readersContinue

Young Adult Fiction and the Youth of a Nation

I’m getting a little tired of YA dystopian novels. They seem calculated only to make money, are highly unoriginal, morally questionable, and full of plot holes. But nobody cares because they are exciting and tell teens yet again, they are super-special (Honest Trailer quote) even before they have done anything. It always boils down toContinue

Gone with the Vanity Fair

I’ve been reading Vanity Fair, by William M. Thackery. It is a large, long book and I hesitated to pick it up at first. Still, it is considered a classic, and I have a personal goal to read as many classics as I can. I took a deep breath and began, and have been delightedContinue

Here’s to C.S. Lewis and Old Books

“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should be content himself with the modern books….This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology….Now this seems toContinue