A Road Trip: Thoughts so far

The advantage of the interstate highway is that it carries you quickly and relatively smoothly where you want to go.  The disadvantage is that it does not allow you to stop anywhere to take photographs. What I would have taken: The giant windmills striding across the ridges and fields. Lines of sight between rows of [...]

Adventures with E-Books

I just finished the first novel I have ever read entirely in e-format (A Discovery of Witches), on my new e-reader. Following the lead of Sybil Harrison, the head librarian at my college, I bought a Kobo, the e-reader associated with the Canadian bookstore chain Chapters/Indigo, rather than a Kindle. I love Amazon, and had [...]

Remembering Diana Wynne Jones

I spent what I count among the happiest three days of my life in Bristol, in early July 2009, attending and presenting a paper at the international conference on Diana Wynne Jones. Scholars, students, editors, and many who “just” read and enjoy Diana Wynne Jones’ novels came together, and spent an entire weekend discussing, enthusing, [...]

Someone at PETA has a sense of humour

A Reading Meme

Do you remember learning to read? How old were you? I know it was before I started school, and I was four then. I do have a clear memory of being on a bus with my mother and suddenly realizing that I could piece together what some of the signs said. What do you find [...]

Which Neil?

Pursuant to my earlier post about Neil Gaiman, many thanks to Mike Ross from my Creative Non-fiction class who tipped me off to this delightful Twitter exchange between a midwestern mum and Neil himself (@neilhimself). You see, she thought she was writing to Neil Patrick Harris. When NG politely replied that she had the wrong [...]

For All You Teachers Out There

Who Is Neil Gaiman?

I get that question a lot. And my inner response is “you haven’t heard of Neil Gaiman? Where have you been for the past year or so?” But then I realize that his rock-star status, his ubiquity, is almost entirely within a) the internet community, b) the sf-fantasy community, or c) the graphic-novel community, or [...]

RIP “Madeleine Brent”

Peter O’Donnell the author best known for writing Modesty Blaise, died today at the age of 90. What a lot of people never realized was that he was also the author of gothic/romance novels under the name of Madeleine Brent. Although he is “best known” as the author of Modesty Blaise, I personally knew him [...]

Twitter Read-a-thon

Have you heard about “One Book, One Twitter”? If you follow Neil Gaiman, you will have, because his book, American Gods is the chosen book. The idea is to get all of Twitter reading one book and presumably tweeting about it. I’m skeptical, but I’m at least going to follow @1B1T2010 out of academic/professional interest [...]