Literature

A Short Reading List That Every American Adult Should Tackle 11
- Education, Entertainment, Featured, Literature, Politics, Uncategorized
- July 7, 2025
If you’re like me, you’ve probably had some point in your life where you knew it was time to stop scrolling through your phone, put all screens far from you, and nail your pants to a chair with the hard copy of a book in your hands. But even when the hearty among us resolve
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Do Yourself a Favor and Memorize a Poem 18
- Culture, Education, Featured, Literature, Uncategorized
- June 30, 2025
Several times a year I require my students to memorize a poem. Sometimes I choose for them (say, “Death Be Not Proud,” by John Donne). Sometimes I hand them an anthology and let them choose. I don’t explain rhyme scheme or poetic devices. I only ask that the students know the meaning of every word
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Bring Back Shaming 20
- Culture, Featured, Literature, Uncategorized, Western Civilization
- May 13, 2025
Author Sarah Wilder published an article on this site last week titled, “BookTok and the Destruction of Literature,” lamenting a TikTok trend among mostly female readers who share an obsessive fascination with sexually explicit fantasy novels. “The decline in reading in America is a troubling fact,” notes Wilder, an avid reader of classic literature, “so a social
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BookTok and the Destruction of Literature 19
- Culture, Entertainment, Featured, Literature, Uncategorized
- May 7, 2025
The decline in reading in America is a troubling fact, so a social media trend that encourages people to frequent bookstores and read well into the night should be a welcome one, right? Yet “BookTok,” a TikTok term that refers to a community of mostly women who read dark, sexually-explicit fantasy novels, is anything but
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April Is National Poetry Month, and We’re All Invited to the Party 19
- Culture, Education, Featured, Literature, Uncategorized
- April 1, 2025
“April is the cruelest month,” begins T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land.” Literal-minded folks living in Minnesota in January or Alabama in August might get a few chuckles from that line. Cruelty and chuckles aside, April is also National Poetry Month (NPM). Initiated in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets, “National Poetry Month
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Boys Will Be Boys … or Will They?13
- Education, Featured, Literature, Uncategorized
- March 28, 2025
In January, my young friend Anna and I inventoried authors by gender on the “New Fiction” shelves of our public library. That count came to 123 novels and short story collections written by women, 64 authored by men. The disparity came as no thunderbolt to me, as I’d noticed for several years the number of
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