Summer Reading

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As a college professor, I enjoy my “time off” in the summer – or, rather, my time to actually get some work done that doesn’t involve grading papers and going to meetings.  I enjoy the slower pace, warmer weather, and Farmers Market veggies as I revise articles and read for upcoming classes.  I also love […]

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August 16

Verklempt

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Herewith, three picture books that have made me, an emotional new-ish mother, secretly choke up a little while reading them aloud to my son. Not because they make me sad, but because they make me happy. Yep, it’s like that around here. And in the case of the first of them, I get misty every […]

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August 14

Best Books of All Time?

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Last week, I came upon this article:  “40 Books to Read Before Turning 40”.  I jokingly sent it to my boyfriend – currently enjoying his last few months in his 30s – and noted that he “has a lot of reading to do.”  The books on the list are certainly some I’d recommend to anyone […]

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August 05

Eleanor and Park

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I originally hail from outside of Omaha, Nebraska, so when I recently read about a YA novel by one-time columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, Rainbow Rowell, my curiosity was piqued.  And when I learned that it was also set in Omaha, my intentions to read it were sealed.  Omaha does not often play the backdrop […]

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August 02

I Capture the Castle

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Despite considering myself an Anglophile, I was somehow unaware of Dodie Smith’s 1949 novel I Capture the Castle until recently, when Jen W., a member of my book group, told the rest of us in the most strenuous terms that we must read it immediately. I quickly learned why it is capable of generating such […]

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July 31

What We Can Learn about HBO’s Girls by Reading Great Expectations

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As I was recently re-reading Great Expectations for my summer class, I realized that Pip’s narration and the directorial point-of-view of HBO’s Girls bear some striking similarities. Because I can only ethically blather on about such a connection for so long in class before feeling guilty and academics as the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals are not […]

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July 22

What Stacy is Reading Now: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga

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When I start something new, I dive in wholeheartedly.  Over the years, my friends and family have seen me intricately plan my dissertation in a twenty-page outline and carefully separate out my lesson plans and teaching materials in binders and multi-colored file folders.  I still proudly read books with two different colored pens in hand.  […]

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July 19

China Miéville’s Mental Calisthenics

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Miéville stretches me. Reading his fiction is like doing yoga of the imagination. With each twinge and contortion, I discover mental muscles I didn’t know I had. His fiction defies categorization: it is fantasy and horror and science fiction and biting sociopolitical critique, all in one heady jumble. Miéville has won several Arthur C. Clarke […]

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What Kids Aren’t Reading

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I recently read an article on NPR’s “monkey see” blog called “What Kids Are Reading” that discusses trends in high school students’ reading habits.  The thrust of the article is that high school students are not reading at their grade level; neither their own leisure-reading choices nor their reading assignments in school tend to be as […]

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July 08

Take My Advice…

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When an award-winning novelist gives you a book recommendation, you should take it. Fellow University Iowa alum and General Education Literature instructor — and honorary “lettered lady” — V. V. Ganeshananthan is my go-to source for teaching ideas as I plan my World Literature syllabi.  (Incidentally, she’s also the author of one of my favorite […]

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