Category: On Stories and Ethics
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Asexuality in SFF: A Ramble
For no logical reason, I found myself thinking about Katsa from Graceling again. I know I’ve written innumerable blog posts about Kristin Cashore’s works. I’ve mentioned my adoration for the romantic subplots in the series. But today we’re going to focus less on the romance and more on one character, at least to start off…
Katie Bachelder
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Rapid Book Reviews (Last Night at the Telegraph Club & These Violent Delights) And Ending Anti-Asian Violence
I’m going to save the more hard-hitting topic for the end, and instead start with the RBR part of the post. I have finished two other books (one of which I finished just this morning), but considering the topic of today’s post, I think they’re best saved for later. Both of the books today are…
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Pride and Prejudice (2005) Movie Analysis
Pride and Prejudice was published by Jane Austen in late January, 1813, a classic romantic tale involving one of the most tantalizing, tense hate-to-love relationship I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. For those of you who don’t know, I’m reading it for my February Romance Reading Challenge. For my last reading challenge, the Middle…
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Tale of Despereaux Movie Analysis
I knew from the moment I started my Middle Grade Reread Challenge, I wanted to end with Tale of Despereaux so I might watch the animated film to see what comparisons could be made. Of course, Tale of Despereaux is not a long book–at 270 pages, it’s actually the shortest book of the challenge–and I was…
Katie Bachelder
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Story-Beat Study: A Song Below Water
Last week, I did a setting study of the urban fantasy novel A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow. Today, we return to it to study its pacing. The novel is relatively short in length–my hardback copy is 286 pages long–and it is divided up into a neat 20 chapters. Before we get too…
Katie Bachelder
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Why Reading Fiction is Important: An Analogy
I know that there are people who don’t read fiction. The idea is that reading fiction is pointless because the narrative either never happened or it doesn’t play out exactly the way it happened in real life. Supposedly, there are better things to do with one’s life than waste it on things that aren’t real,…
Katie Bachelder
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New Additions to my TBR List: Supporting Black Authors
I will admit that, as a reader, I tend not to care much about an author unless I find that I really enjoy their work. It’s the book covers and the synopses that I judge a book by to determine if I want to read it. Well, that, and the title. Yet I don’t need…
Katie Bachelder
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In Extremis
I write this on March 23d, on the heels of an announcement made in my state: all non-essential personnel are now mandated to stay home in order to decrease how overwhelmed the medical field is going to get as a result of this virus. For certain occupations, where it is already possible to work from…
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A Matter of Language and Culture
There exists in fantasy a trope that doesn’t quite feel like a trope until it comes to your attention that it appears quite frequently. It is the adventurer’s best friend and most subtle deus ex machina. It is, in essence, the “ancient language” trope, in which there exists two languages in a fantasy setting: the…
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On Character Accuracy
Last week I, I brought up the happy news that Wheel of Time is getting its own TV show. However, with conflict already brewing over questions of character race and what that should mean for their actors and actresses, I thought it would be prudent to dedicate an entire blog post about it. Book-to-screen adaptions…
Katie Bachelder 