I'm starting Evvie Drake Starts Over next, as soon as I finish up this post-apocalyptic police procedural The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn. It has been a pretty good beach read, if you like female detectives mixed with post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. The world Carrie Vaughn has created with this, the second novel in a new series, is pretty interesting. The first book in the series is Bannerless. She raises some interesting questions about morality and society's responsibilities in a world with limited resources.

my textbook on gifted and talented learners


very fascinating

I just put a hold on both of these titles. File under: extremely my shit

This really cool article
 

While waiting for my therapy session tonight, I read from a fairly recent issue of a magazine, they had on the table in the waiting room. Lots of amazing and very interesting articles, and even some sharp criticism of op-eds featured in prior publications, by readers themselves.

There was a main article that anchored the recent publication, which explored myths of race. Law, African-American studies and Sociology professor Dorothy Roberts presented her much studied and researched topic on why "Race is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one". The article starts out as an interview between Roberts and journalist, Mark Leviton.

The article is SO enlightening, that I can't just pick one or two quotes, plus it's an article densely populated by the many ways racism affects people of color and the intersectional dimensions of institutionalized racism across American institutions which have marginalized and hurt people of color, for way too long.

Roberts in-depth article is featured in the April 2019 edition of The Sun (pp., 4-13).


My favorite part of the magazine to read and contemplate upon is from the section toward the back, and they title of that particular section is called One Nation, Indivisible.

From the editor of The Sun: "One Nation, Indivisible" features excerpts from The Sun's archives that speak to the current political moment. You can read the full text of excerpted sections online at … www.thesunmagazine.org/onenation.

An interesting quote, from the very last page of the magazine, in the section titled: Sunbeams.

"We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary; or the inequalities that make it possible," ~ Michael Eric Dyson (left hand column, page 48).

I'm reading "I, Who Did Not Die" by Meredith May, Najah Aboud, and Zahed Haftlang

It is a rare examination of the absurdity of a war fought by children and young men who were victims of the brutal dictators they were forced to serve. This powerful tale of two men whose lives collide on the battlefield shows that acts of mercy are the ultimate triumph of compassion over hate.

I'm reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas.

"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life"

I read that, and found it very interesting. It was not what I would call a fun read, but it was eye-opening.

* * *

I am reading _On The Beach_ by Nevil Shute, a classic 1950s post-apocalyptic novel that I have been meaning to read for a long time. People in Melbourne, Australia wait to catch radiation sickness as the fallout from a nuclear war swirls ever closer around the earth due to weather patterns. They shift back and forth from trying to live normal lives, to trying to find out what's going on in other parts of the world.

* * *

I may re-read _The Handmaid's Tale_ after this, as I just learned today that the sequel has finally come out - _The Testaments_ by Margaret Atwood. It's been a long time since I read THT, and I haven't been able to make myself pay for Hulu so I can watch the series. I remember it as pretty tough to take, and it made me angry a lot, but it was a _great_ read.

Nevil Shute is quite the story teller! I liked his book A Town Called Alice. Did you know that he was an early 20th century Aeronautical Engineer by day, but in his evening hours he cultivated his writing career (sort of like a hobby, at first)? That's what a short biographical statement said about him, that he didn't want his writing (hobby) to upset his engineering career. I'll have to check out other books he's written, one day. Thanks for mentioning Nevil Shute, Georgia, in your post tonight.

I bought a used edition of Amor Towles' novel, The Rules of Civility (2011). That's what I'm reading on my train commute to work. Keeping it light, my reading materials lately.

*** Spoiler Alert & Trigger Alert ***
 

The Nickel Boys: A Novel, by Colson Whitehead
(September 2019; Doubleday, Penquin Random House Publishers, LLC).


I am nearly ready to go out for my afternoon walking activity, but wanted to leave a 'spoiler alert' for the book I'm taking with me. I bought it about a month ago, right before Labor Day Holiday. I was intrigued with the book, after Barack Obama featured it as one of the books he read this past summer.

So, without having even begun to read the book, yet having read the author's opening comments in the prologue to his novel, I want to share what Colson Whitehead wrote in the opening pages of his novel's narrative:

A Note From Colson Whitehead

"Usually, I mix it up when it comes to my books. A humorous novel might be followed by a more serious work; an omniscient, editorializing narrative voice might follow a more personal one. A long book finds its antidote in a "shortie," and an expansive one gets balanced by a more intimate story the next time out. I'll write a novel about the zombie apocalypse, and then toil over a nonfiction account about the World Series of Poker. The change in genre, tone, and structure keeps the work vital to me each time, and I'm energized by the challenge of figuring out a new way to tell a story.

Which is why I initially thought I'd follow up The Underground Railroad, a story of slavery and American history and escape, with a lively heist novel. A crime story was a nice antidote to the novel that I had just published, which had the lowest jokes-per-page count of anything I'd ever written. Who doesn't like a heist story? The planning, the execution, the inevitable disaster in the aftermath. It was quite a distance from the story of Cora and her perilous run to freedom.

But I found myself in a bit of trouble. It was the spring of 2017, and I lived in a nation divided. After the last presidential election, it was impossible to ignore the unending barrage of chaos and strife, particularly when it came to race. How to reconcile the racial progress we've made since my grandparents' generation with our current regression into bitterness, discord and rage? The optimist in me has to believe in a better future for my children, but the pessimist maintains that we have a long and troublesome path ahead, as we always have. In the story of Elwood and Turner, my two Nickel Boys, I tried to find a method to dramatize my existential quandary. I doubted that I was alone in my distress.

So no heist this time out. But a crime nonetheless.

We first meet Elwood. A straight-A student, he has come of age during a time of civil rights struggle and civil rights triumph. He imagines himself marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as part of the new American generation that will fix the world, demonstration by demonstration, protest by protest. Elwood gets sent to Nickel Academy through a twist of fate. He is caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and for a young black man that can mean terrible consequences. Turner, another student at Nickel, is his opposite number. An orphan who lives by his wits, he thinks he sees the world as it actually is -- a merciless area where promises are made then broken, and hope is snuffed out by the machinery of How Things Work. In writing these boys into existence, I might give fear to my own fear and confusion, but also speak, in whatever small way I can, for the real-life survivors of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, my model for the Nickel Academy.

I first came upon the report about Dozier in the summer of 2014. In the few weeks after Eric Gardner was choked to death by police on Staten Island and in the midst of the Ferguson protests. Every day, there seemed to be another terrible incident (the next few paragraphs I have omitted, to include the final paragraph, as follows).

Writing this book is one small way of bearing witness, I suppose, and discovering the boys' story is another. When I was composing The Nickel Boys, I lived in that unsettled region between hope and despair. As I contemplate how to prevent tragedies such as the one in those pages, I tumble into another, equally maddening netherworld: the one between action and de facto complicity," (Colson Whitehead, in The Nickel Boys).

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Both of my sons are African-American and they haven't been in my life now for several years, but I know the heartbreaking trauma's they have suffered in life, first hand. Colson Whitehead's book will be trigger every trigger I have about how my son's have been mistreated in life.... but I'm going to read it anyway and try to keep an open mind and will look for ways I can help myself in dealing with losses my son's endure, still.

~~
Nothing... suggestions welcomed

I vacillate between reading research on creatively gifted learners, and students with traumatic brain injuries and how the brain learns.

One of these will be my major research project (not that i needed one to graduate, but I WANTED a major research project to move on to a PhD).

Lets just say that my faculty chair loves my idea and where I am going....and another faculty member already jumped on board to help in any way she could! I think they are fighting for me! lol

good to be wanted!! :detective:

I am reading BANNERLESS now, and listening to UNCLOBBER, by Colby Martin:

UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality: Churches in America are experiencing an unprecedented fracturing due to their belief and attitude toward the LGBTQ community. Armed with only six passages in the Bible often known as the "clobber passages" the traditional Christian position has been one that stands against the full inclusion of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. Unclobber reexamines each of those frequently quoted passages of Scripture, alternating with author Colby Martin's own story of being fired from an evangelical megachurch when they discovered his stance on sexuality.

UnClobber reexamines what the Bible says (and does not say) about homosexuality in such a way that breathes fresh life into outdated and inaccurate assumptions and interpretations.

It is interesting but i am kind of over the whole idea of trying to find a way to fit ourselves into the Bible. Let the clobber passages stand as they are, and understand that the real project lies in getting people to accept that God's creation is also a Bible, and that areas where the written word contradicts the created word should be resolved in favor of the created, as the written word bears the taint of human corruption and should be questioned.

I didn't get very far with reading the book by Colson Whitehead. :(

It is soooo triggery, I just can't read it. I will most likely take this lovely book to the library and see if they'd like to have it (which I'm sure they will).

I'm reading a book that I may have gotten the rec for here. If so, thank you very much to whoever recommended it.

It's _Adventures in the Screen Trade_ by William Goldman. Yes, that William Goldman - _The Princess Bride_, _All The President's Men_, _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_. It's about how his books were made into screenplays and then into movies. It's pretty eye-opening about the ins-and-outs of film production.

I've got a treat for you, my sister friend, Georgia!

Have you ever heard of Dead Pilot's Society?

Dead Pilots Society
with Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker

In Dead Pilots Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks but were never produced are given the table reads they deserve. Starring actors you know and love from television and film, a live audience, and a good time in which no one gets notes, no one is fired, and everyone laughs. Presented by Andrew Reich (Friends; Worst Week) and Ben Blacker (The Writers Panel podcast; co-creator, Thrilling Adventure Hour).

You can find it online, by scrolling down the page, at: www.maximumfun.org/shows/culture

The main page (www.maximumfun.org) has all types of awesome podcasts, like....

Oh No, Ross & Carrie ( this podcast is super funny, lots of laughter)….

Who Shot Ya? (this podcast is about films and movies)

.. just to name a couple of them. It's a fun place to find podcasts of a wide variety of interest. :)

between these:

Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy

and

Essentials of Specific Learning Disability Identification

the last days at hot slit by andrea dworkin. wow do we need this women now! It has prompted me to get some of her other work....intercourse and women hating. what she was saying the 70's and 80's still holds true. the times they may be changing but not at a very fast pace.

I’m reading ‘The Travelers’ by Regina Porter, it’s a fantastic multi-generational, multi-threaded family story that spans multiple decades in Modern American history. It reads like a screenplay, has as many interwoven characters as Marquez novel, and delves into deep waters addressing racism and multiracial family dynamics with a deftness that is pretty damn remarkable. I’d say this novel was overlooked by all the big awards committees.

I’ve also had the pleasure of reading some of the widely lauded new novels
Ocean Vuong’s genre breaking “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” should be a part of the queer canon. It is truly remarkable.

I devoured Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments” within a couple of days and was not at all disappointed, but completely enthralled. I also saw her National Theatre simulcast reading the day it was published.

I just sped-read Ann Patchett’s “The Dutch House” in 2.5 days - she’s a brilliant weaver of stories.

And I throughly enjoyed Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest “City of Girls” - a wonderful story of courageous women breaking the rules, and a fabulous romp through New York theatre world in the mid century.

And now... I’m impatiently awaiting the publication of “The Secret Commonwealth” Philip Pullman’s second in the prequel/sequel series that sandwiches the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy.

Edited to add: typos are due to (a) my iPhone which is not terribly smart (b) my suddenly and rapidly deteriorating 45yr old eyesight.