Paula McLain’s novel The Paris Wife describes Hemingway’s earliest years as a novelist writing in Paris after WWI from the perspective of his wife, Hadley. It’s a wonderful novel, set in one of the most dynamic literary periods, where James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Hemingway … Read More
Author: Kate Stover
“By and large, art both instructs and entertains us.”
“The world is too much with us.”
Two-hundred years ago, when William Wordsworth published the poem that begins with the line quoted above, critics were not impressed. In fact, they ridiculed him for using the words “of the common man” instead of using a scholar’s proper poetic diction. Wordsworth sparked a revolution. It took many years, … Read More
“Many modern books on ‘style’ have suggested that there are only two styles: good and bad.”
This book, Clear and Simple as the Truth, takes a much different view. The authors argue that there are many styles for writers to choose from – including contemplative, classic, romantic, plain, oratorical, practical, and diplomatic. This book focuses primarily on the classic style – its history, conventions, philosophy, … Read More
“Researchers found that students who wrote prolifically before high-stakes performances, like examinations and final papers, significantly improved their performance on their final work” (69).
Interestingly, in this study by Ramirez and Beilock (2011), as summarized by Gary R. Hafer in Embracing Writing, it didn’t matter whether students wrote about the subject matter or about their emotions and anxiety – what mattered was how frequently they wrote. Hafer makes a case for encouraging students … Read More
“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.”
The situation, Vivian Gornick explains in this book about the art of personal narrative, is the context or circumstances, while the story is “the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say” (13). Gornick argues that the most difficult and important work of memoirists is to understand why… Read More
“Can you tell a story that doesn’t begin, it’s just suddenly happening?”
In each of the six short stories in this collection, which won the 2015 National book Award, things suddenly happen on the first page: there are no descriptions of the setting, no background information. Instead, the story seems to be already happening. In an interview, author Adam Johnson said, … Read More
“This all sounds very messy”
What I’m looking for – perhaps what we’re all looking for – are learning principles that are most likely to lead to long-term retention – even if they’re messy. In Small Teaching, Jim Lang describes a learning principle called “interleaving” that requires two things: spacing out learning sessions, and … Read More
“Keeping secrets was the family business.”
Five Intriguing Ideas from 2016 Books
This blog focuses on one idea from one book each week, and so selecting just five from the 50 or so that I’ve published in 2016 is a challenge. But after looking through them all, I have to say that the ideas that I enjoyed the most from the books … Read More
Five Best Novels of 2016
The five novels that rose to the top of my 2016 list are:
The best word to describe Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton is exquisite. What I love about Strout is her ability to dive right in to the heat of the moment without engaging in melodrama or … Read More
“Attributes like confidence, enthusiasm, and likability can be perceived in the briefest of exposures.”
In The Spark of Learning, Sarah Rose Cavanagh describes a study where students were asked to rate professors after seeing 30-second videos of lectures that had no audio. The students’ ratings predicted with surprising accuracy the professors’ actual end-of-semester evaluations. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that in teaching … Read More
“There’s work to be done, there are plots to be plotted, there are scams to be scammed, there are villains to be misled!”
This may be Margaret Atwood’s greatest masterpiece. In Hag-Seed, she retells Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” by turning it inside-out and adding a layer. It’s a play within a play within a novel. This restructuring results in a hybrid form of story-telling that’s actually very funny. In her version, prisoners discuss … Read More
“Bernard Shaw said you should try everything once except folk dancing and incest.”
This is how Michael Billington, “the” British theater critic, who has reviewed more than 9000 plays over the last 50 years, begins his piece on “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles. Charming, gossipy, insightful, authoritative, knowledgeable, and passionate, Billington is a great writer. It’s hard to imagine what kind … Read More
“To look closely with the attention of questioning changes everything.”
“It is,” Jane Hirshfield writes in this collection of essays about poetry, “if undertaken fully, revolutionary.” More stimulating than a triple-shot of espresso, these essays show what can happen when a great poet sets out to describe how poetry is primarily “an instrument of investigation and a mode of perception.” … Read More