AM Homes–Oui/Non?

Today’s work book was for kids. Gayle at Everyday I Write the Book has a post up about AM Homes that I largely agree with. Great characters, complex situations, but ultimately soulless. I remember this being a trend about 10 years ago, epitomized in Homes’s books and Todd Solondz’s film Happiness. I believe art should explore the dark sides of human nature, but there has to be a purpose–a story worth telling. On a related note, House Next Door has a fantabulous dialogue between Matt…

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What Janie Found by Caroline B. Cooney

Synopsis: A young woman still dealing with the knowledge that she was kidnapped as a child discovers an upsetting truth about the woman who stole her. Review: What Janie Found is the fourth book in a series about Janie Johnson, which began with YA classic The Face on the Milk Carton. Imagine while eating your cafeteria lunch you see your own face on the side of a milk carton as a missing child–that’s Janie’s story. It’s a powerful book (and was made into a fabulous…

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Contemplating Structure, Time and the First-Person

In another incarnation I spent some time teaching screenwriting, which, as you may know, is all about structure. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that there is no screenwriting without structure. Typically, that means three acts highlighting a tightly causal chain of events with linear narration. In films that utilize flashback structure, these flashbacks are usually ordered so that they unfold in a linear fashion. Even Memento, to provide a notable example of a film that plays with time, employs linear temporality…

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The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Synopsis: New step-sister Amanda wants to teach David and his younger siblings all about practicing magic, but when they learn that their house was once haunted by a poltergeist, no one can tell what’s made up and what’s real. Review: The Headless Cupid is the second of the three YA books I’m reading for the Banned Books Challenge. I was only familiar with Snyder’s The Egypt Game, which I remember as being cryptically creepy, the perfect read for a curious fourth-grader like myself.

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Alas, and did my Savior bleed

Today is Good Friday. Our church doesn’t own its building, so we won’t be going to a service tonight. Instead, we’ll be watching Acts 3&4 of When the Levees Broke. While watching the first half last night I had to keep my eyes on my knitting to keep from dissolving in tears every five minutes. It’s shocking to see so many people suffering so greatly, under a baking hot sun with help so frustratingly unavailable. Why those people couldn’t have gotten food and water dropped…

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Winterwood by Patrick McCabe

Synopsis: Entranced by the folk tales of an old mountain man, and repulsed by the same man’s grisly crimes, Redmond Hatch struggles to narrate the events which led him to bring his beloved wife and daughter to winterwood. Review: I was upset by the way Winterwood seduced me. I did not want to be reeled in by Redmond and his elliptical storytelling because I knew that, between the lines, he was telling me stories I didn’t want him to be able to tell. I wanted…

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We Have a Winner!

In honor of Buy a Friend a Book week, I ran a contest to see if anyone could guess my other hobbies besides reading. I had millions of entries, but only one lucky winner. I do not: snort crystal meth make soap swim in the Hudson river teach the deaf to sing collect used bubble gum make model sailing ships out of toothpicks Someone guessed online scrabble, but I picked up that hobby after the contest began, so that’s wrong, too. If you browse through…

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Unprotected by Anonymous, MD

Synopsis: A survey of the state of affairs in campus counseling, presenting the argument that sexual activity is being left out of the equation with disastrous results. Review: The full title, Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in her Profession Endangers Every Student, offers a very good sense of the writer’s agenda, and she provides a great deal of evidence to support her claims. The term “political correctness” seems designed to tip off the right that she’s “one of us,” but really it’s…

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The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Synopsis: By refusing to sell chocolates in the annual school sale, one high school freshman learns whether or not his universe can bear to be shaken. Review: The Chocolate War is the first of my books for the Banned Books Challenge, hosted by The Pelham Library. I have read Cormier’s books a number of times since first encountering them in middle school, and I’m still amazed at the power that they have to shock, wound, and enlighten.

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Words, Words, Words

My new addiction to online Scrabble has me thinking about how much I love words, those pesky little lettered things that roam errant across the page, resisting containment even by the author, each sentence a pregnant cumulonimbus promising disaster, by turns jocular and contentious, the period an upstart proclaiming its unearned dominance.

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