Po(sey) Sessions

My 11 year old daughter hates to read. This is a great pity and sadness to me. I know she is reluctant about reading and struggles with it some. I also feel a slight rebellion or defiance in her. She enjoys saying she doesn't like to read because I own a bookstore. She cherishes that irony. On one hand I appreciate her understanding of irony. On the other hand I always think that if I present her with the RIGHT book that I can change her into a reader! Recently she listened to the audiobook for The Inventor's Secret. It grabbed her RIGHT AWAY. Like I said, she is reluctant to read. I can get her to listen to audiobooks occasionally, but she usually tells me she is bored. I want her to read with her eyes, but I also like that she can enjoy stories outside of the struggles she might feel with reading. I know those struggles well. I am not now, nor have I ever been a particularly good reader. It is interesting how something that you aren't good at can become the thing you ar...

One of the reason I miss updating my blog is that I enjoy going back and seeing what I was reading and if I liked it. Some of the books I have blogged about I still haven't finished. Some I never will. Lately I have been working on really interesting mix of reading, especially driven by my personal research in dystopian literature and communal living. Today I finished Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock and it was basically amazing. It lost me in the last little bit, the moments just before the end. I am a little bummed out about this, but I think I will get over it soon and just go on loving the book. Hoping to try more books by this author soon. I "read" Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock via audiobook, and I just loved the narrator for it. I found out he is also the narrator for the audio of Perks of Being a Wallflower. Perks is one of those books I have been reading in a REALLY long time, this will be a good excuse to get back to it. I am extremely good at starting books. Prob...

Dystopia has been defined and redefined as every generation discovers and rediscovers the power it can have as a fiction, as an informative device, as a life changing event. There are many simple way to understand dystopia, but none of them help to understand the scope of dystopia. I pick up and put down dystopian research throughout my life.  When I was 16 I read 1984 and Thomas More's Utopia and these two books changed my life. They sparked in me interest and excitement. I have been chasing that desire ever since. I have also left and returned to blogging over the years. I have been stricken by the pressure to produce, but also by life getting in the way of things. The way that life gets in the way is essential to many dystopian narrative, especially the real life ones we see more and more often on the news. We used to fear Big Brother, and now we know he is there, yet somehow fall under the illusion that we are safe because we are too busy to deal with it. Dystopi...