Category: Books and Reading
The wonderful thing about After the Rain is that it feels so true. Like a good writer should, Norma Fox Mazer takes ordinary, everyday life and writes about it in such a way that it becomes interesting and compelling. After the Rain recounts the story of Rachel, a typical middle-class teenager just trying to live her life. Rachel struggles with what it means to be a high school student, what it means to have a boyfriend, and what it means to be a granddaughter–which are all interconnected, as...
There’s nothing in the living world like books on water cures, deaths-of-a-thousand-slices, or pouring white-hot lava off castle walls on drolls and mountebanks. How I just love Ray Bradbury’s writing style. After I read any of his stories or novels, the world becomes a more interesting place. Falling leaves become tears that the trees cry; rain is the cleansing power of the universe; books are portals to new worlds. Ray Bradbury takes the ordinary world and electrifies it until it shimmers with a glow that was always waiting...
“What I hold is not a neuronic whip, nor is it a tickler. It is a blaster and very deadly. I will use it and I will not aim over your heads. I will kill many of you before you seize me, perhaps most of you. I am serious. I look serious, do I not?” The wonderful thing about Isaac Asimov is that he’s just so readable. A person can pick up one of his books and just dive in with little or no preparation, and yet Asimov...
“This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. I don’t…this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We’re an army going out to set other men free.” What motivates a nation to go to war with other nations? What motivates a nation to go to war...
“Master, sadness was made for men, not for beasts, but if men let themselves give way too much to it, they turn into beasts.” It has been said that a person should read Don Quixote at least three times in one’s life: in youth, in middle age, and in old age. I whole-heartedly agree, but I would hope that it could be read more often than that. This is my all-time favorite book, the one book I would want with me if I was stuck on a deserted...
Truisms, my young friend, are the useless children of hindsight. There was a time–about five years ago–when only a few of my students had heard of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Of course, all that has changed with Peter Jackson’s magnificent movies. Now all of my students are familiar with the story, and many of them have read the books. If you haven’t read them yet, buy them immediately–they’re that good (and so much more satisfying than the movies, which I also happen to love). But...
Of all the books that have been read in my classroom over the years, one continually grabs the attention of my students and keeps them interested from page one: Ender’s Game. Maybe it’s the non-stop action; maybe it’s watching Ender try to rise through the ranks of the battle school; maybe it’s the threat of the Buggers returning to make war on humanity. I think it might just be that they like Ender Wiggin so much, they want to see how far he can go. The book takes...
