Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown, a young adult fantasy novel from the early 1980s, always stood out in my memory as a formative read from childhood. Unfortunately I couldn’t really say what the book was about! Over the years, everything about it had faded. The Blue […]
Now for some obvious advice: don’t start a ten book series by reading book 8! I was well aware of this when I was a kid and I happened to pick up the eighth book in Roger Zelazny’s Amber series. But I didn’t have money to buy lots […]
Nowadays I can pick up any pop cultural obsession that I want – hey, it’s the internet age and my nerdy disposable income goes a long ways. But when I was a kid, it was almost always hard to find cool stuff. I ended up reading a whole […]
Let’s say you’re reading a book about a boy who grows up to be a wizard. That’s a very familiar story… so do you want exactly what you’re expecting? Or are you prepared for something new and interesting? Ursula K. Le Guin’s famous Earthsea series started with a […]
What makes a compelling book tick? Sometimes I find it hard to tell, especially if the story works so well that I don’t even think about the craft involved. A good way to get to know a book, especially for an otherwise quick reader like myself: listen to […]
Flatter your reader. That sounds like a pretty solid narrative strategy! Make your audience think they are really smart, and they’ll probably come back for more. Books can do this automatically, just by the virtue of taking us into the thoughts of other people – not so easy […]
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