Publishing

adult-3086304_1280

How to Make Pop-Culture References Everyone Will Understand

In life, pop culture references are an everyday part of conversation. They’re an ice breaker for interacting with new people and a way to bond with friends. How often have you casually quoted Star Trek among strangers to see who looks up, sent a meme from The Office with your coworkers, or shared an obscure Percy Jackson joke with friends. Pop culture references are the only inside jokes you can make with total strangers—a shared experience created through the invention of mass media that connects people in ways never seen before.

Blog_Post_History

Why You Should Read More History Books

“History books can reveal patterns, offer context to current events and provide facts that a reader is forced to face (and history books aren’t all hard, cold facts that must be memorized, might I add). Fictional stories sometimes glorify and romanticize toxic and illegal actions, and although most people can differentiate between what they find cool in fiction versus reality, others can find it desensitizing.”

pexels-julioshiness-2239914_Large_2

The Rise and Importance of Dystopian Literature for Young Adults

The dystopian setting—futuristic, typically end-of-world or post-war-world environments with oppressive governments and limited possibilities to be individualistic—creates perfect conditions for young adult readers to push the boundaries like the protagonists in these books, especially with such dominant themes of empowerment, liberation, identity, individual thinking, and agency.

chrys_blogpic_Fall24

Accessibility: A Reader’s Perspective

I was born legally blind. What that means for me is that I have never been able to see what a sighted person sees. I have some residual vision. In the blind and low vision community, this makes me a “partial,” which can be taken to mean either partially sighted or partially blind.

What this means for me as a reader is that I use a variety of ways of accessing books: reading print books at regular print sizes at a very close distance, reading large print books, and listening to audiobooks.

A book with a reel of film on top, representing the adaptation of a novel into a film.

Stigma Stinks: A Love Letter to Novelizations of Films and Television

I’m sure most people who love stories relate to the experience of finishing a great piece of content and wishing they could have something else, anything, that would allow them to exist within that world for just one more millisecond. Many times, I end up watching or reading the same thing over and over again, trying to drink up as much of it as I possibly can, searching for hidden clues I’ve never noticed before. I argue that doing so does not diminish the quality of the work, does not detract from the artfulness of the story, so why do people believe that taking a film or television show and adapting it to a book format makes that book a meaningless endeavor?

1 2 … 24