Dear Readers! This is the end of my critical review of Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen (Harper 2013). Part One is HERE. Part Two is HERE.

( Click here to read this essay! )

Human beings tell stories, to entertain, to explore, and to define themselves. We class ourselves and others by comparing the narratives of the cultures we are part of, and deciding which assumptions of another’s culture are like or unlike our own. Every other person is an alien to us, their culture a foreign planet whose ways we can never fully ( Read more... )

[Warning: this post includes for purposes of discussion innapropriate metaphors that rely on misogyny, homophobia, and ablism.]

I just read Joshua Foer's article about a year in the life of John Quijadaarticle about a year in the life of John Quijada, creator of the constructed language IthkuilIthkuil, in the December 24 & 31, 2012, edition of The ( Read more... )

sitive, unconstitutional...]

[Note: This post has a few ablist slurs used as examples of my point.]

Today Melissa McEwan had a brilliant insight into how (dis)ablist* slurs impede the Left's ability to confront the bad policies of the Right.  I mean, I know all the reasons of courtesy, accuracy, and social justice to purge one's vocabulary of ( Read more... )

1. I said in my last post that I love "discovering" writers writing cleverly about things I find interesting.  Here is Ana Mardoll whose feminist "Deconstructions" are all good. (Click on "Index" at the top to get to a list of all her "Deconstructions") Some examples:
Deconstruction of The Beauty and the Beast (by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de ( Read more... )

Dear Reader(s ( Read more... )

( Heroin addict? Well at least he's not bi. Also hyena teeth and heroic orcs and more! )

Today I'm going to talk about The Ideal Man.

Now, this is not my ideal man, but I mean the concept of an Ideal Man. I just finished reading aloud to my aged mother* Owen Wister's 1902 novel The Virginian, which invented the Western, and strove to show through its title character an exemplar of the archetypical New American Man of Wister's day. Now, ( Read more... )

Poll New TSA ProceduresIt's not what you say. It's how you say it. ;P

Today I read this post by multiple SFF award-winning author Catherynne M. Valente* (yuki_onna ) who was distressed by a common habit among people reviewing her novels, claiming that because they have similes and alliteration and stuff, they must be poetry, first of all, and second of all that this is a bad thing. She also rants a bit about the state of ( Read more... )