WaPo says "It’s unclear how Dessen, who lives in North Carolina, spotted the article in South Dakota," but I presume Dessen has a Google alert on her own name. It's completely easy these days to keep track of whether you're ever mentioned anywhere, even in small local papers (unless they aren't on line).
Dessen tweeted: "Authors are real people. We put our heart and soul into the stories we write often because it is literally how we survive in this world. I’m having a really hard time right now and this is just mean and cruel. I hope it made you feel good."
By Friday morning, the post had how many 731 and 2,500 replies [sic]. Many piled onto the 2017 college graduate, as other well-known authors joined the fray.Naturally, predictably, what followed was a backlash against Dessen and the authors who joined forces with her to attack a completely obscure young woman.
“F--- that f-----g b----” fellow author Siobhan Vivian replied to Dessen’s tweet....
Soon other prominent authors with hundreds of thousands of followers piled on, including Gay, Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Jenny Han, and Angie Thomas. Even Penguin Teen, an imprint of Penguin Books USA, shared Dessen’s complaint, encouraging people to respond to it.
At the heart of the anger is a persistent feeling that young adult literature, and particularly YA books aimed at teenage girls, is treated less seriously than other genres. Many of the upset authors interpreted [the student's] dismissal of Dessen’s work as a commentary on all authors who write for teen girls.
Perhaps the worst aspect of this story is that Dessen got apologies from the University and from the reporter who put the student's quote in the newspaper story.
Posts
105 comments:
Shameful. Or can these adults not feel shame anymore?
whitney asked... Shameful. Or can these adults not feel shame anymore?
shame? are you shame-shaming her?
YA has always had a reputation of inferiority. As such YA authors have huge chips on their shoulders. If you don't like criticism you probably should choose a different profession. The student is only critical of the work within the context of the school's assigned reading list, not specifically of the quality of the authors' work. The author can't make that distinction?
Given their respective ages and stations the author should have displayed more tact. An opportunity for education was missed.
That said haters gonna hate. Everyone hated the ending of Game of Thrones, too...but the makers of Spider Man didn't lash out at Scorsese on Twitter, did they?
Oh, and YA authors can make a lot of crap...and a lot of money...
I take it that young women means the guy doesn't unfurl his manhood.
Butch up Sarah. You create stuff, not everyone is gonna like it, accept it and move on with your life.
I saw the required summer reading books for my kids during HS and they were all liberal junk including that “kites” book by that fake guy.
How about reading some Tom Wolfe? “I am Charlotte Simons” would be perfect for college kids.
"commentary on all authors who write for teen girls"
"Oh, like, OMG, I dunno what like to think, like yeah this is ya know so hurtful. It's like I'm livin' out Mean Girls or something"
"Then it came to me, and I got the lesson. Something about heat, a kitchen, and some guy named Harry Truman. Who's he?"
These “everyone reads the same book over the summer” programs seem like a good opportunity to instill ideas in young people’s heads and then socially shame and ostracize them if they dare to question anything.
Just a theory. Probably never happens.
Outrage- > Backlash
Outrage -> Backlash
If only we could shut off the desire to feel outraged...
You have to be a lot more delicate in writing about a middle-aged man's sexual obsession when the audience is teen-age girls.
"Lolita" was a YA novel at heart.
I am Laslo.
I would pay good money to attend a gathering of Althouse commenters. Best blog around. Don't expect another like it.
Ahhh...the first twitter storm that I found out about on twitter!
Dessen is an embarrassment. If she can't take criticism, then she's in the wrong field. The other authors too. What this really is is an attack on freedom of conscience. They went after this young woman for voicing a completely reasonable opinion.
Naturally, predictably, what followed was a backlash against Dessen and the authors who joined forces with her
Good.
There's been some ongoing weird stuff between the twitterfolk and the authorettes of kiddie stories, e.g. one of several tales -> NYT.
I saw the required summer reading books for my kids during HS and they were all liberal junk including that “kites” book by that fake guy.
I wondered if the student was mostly disturbed by the idea the book pickers chose a beach read instead of more leftie propaganda.
What's next? Nobels and Pulitzers for Romance Novels?
The only YA novel I cared for, even when I was YA, was "Sounder". Maybe they should read that. No wait, it was written by a white man about the black experience...no can do.
Dessen could be the main character in one of her own novels, this is such a classic teenage girl response, an hysterical over-reaction that includes trying to get everyone else to hate on the person as well.
I'm involved in raising two granddaughters and a grandson. So, I see all the popular kids' media.
The publishing and media worlds are overwhelming skewed toward girls. Feminist propaganda is a constant drumbeat. You get a dose in every plot line of every book, show, movie, video, etc.
Not constantly being praised and elevated to first place above boys is now perceived as discrimination and bias against girls.
The reality here is so perversely opposite the claims... how can we go on believing this shit?
American women are the safest, richest, most powerful, most doted upon group of people in human history. They have been every day of my life and I'll be 70 in January. They're also incredible drama queens who manage to constantly demand the spotlight. Spoiled girls.
ST
But American women have what we want and need. So, I say dote all day.
"Many of the upset authors interpreted [the student's] dismissal of Dessen’s work as a commentary on all authors who write for teen girls."
And of course they turned around and diligently vindicated that dismissal.
"an hysterical over-reaction that includes trying to get everyone else to hate on the person as well."
Such unexpected behavior from a woman!
What the world needs now
Is another YA fiction author
Like I need a hole in my head
What the world needs now
Is some real words of wisdom
Like “lala lala la la la lala”
https://youtu.be/1n8rfFRvIH0
"Perhaps the worst aspect of this story is that Dessen got apologies from the University and from the reporter who put the student's quote in the newspaper story."
Does anyone in academia agree with you that that is "the worst aspect"? In orthodox progland, is there anyone who even remotely understands why you might say that?
Why do the have chips on their shoulders
Book Summaries of Sarah Dessen's works from her Wikipedia page:
2006 – Just Listen follows Annabel who seems to be the girl who has everything: a best friend, a good reputation and she models. After a misunderstanding between Annabel and her best friend, she loses everything and has to start the new high school year alone. This is when she meets Owen who helps her out of her comfort zone and reveal her true self
Saint Anything shows us that Sydney's older brother, Peyton, used to be the star child of the family until he was involved in a drunk driving accident and everyone is worried about him while Sydney's the only one worried about the victim of the accident. It isn't until she meets Mac who makes her feel like she's noticed for the first time
...
2009 – Along for the Ride is focused on Auden, whose life starts to fall apart left and right and is losing her sense of direction. She forms a new bond with her baby half sister and takes her on many midnight walks where she learns that there is a whole other world out there when the rest of the world is sleeping
...
2017 – Once and For All is about Louna who thinks she has found her one true love until a tragedy separates them forever. She takes on a summer job helping brides plan their special day when she meets Ambrose, who just might be what she's been looking for all along.
OMG if Picoult piled on an unknown student, I am going to die. It sounds like a book she would write, where an unknown young person commits suicide because a famous group of jackals attacks her on line (I cannot stand Jodi Picoult's writings. Come at me, Picoult)
Let's state a universal truth: Nobody likes being criticized in public.
More interesting than the mean girl stuff to me is the revelation that colleges are charging tens of thousands to teach the modern equivalent of Nancy Drew Mysteries. What a racket, lol.
YA novels were the gateway drug for science fiction for several generations. Heinlein in particular, but also Andre Norton (though she was not explicitly marketed that way, that's essentially what her books were), Alan E. Nourse and others. Of course those were pitched at boys, but nobody thought less of the authors for writing to or capturing a young audience.
Rowling pitched at everybody. You can point to her flaw, but her books worked. YA has nothing to be ashamed of.
There's good YA stuff out there. Heinlein's juveniles are still engaging for many kids. More recently, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and other series based on Greek and other mythologies are both popular and good. Ms. Dessen is demonstrating a notable lack of selflessness.
OMG Picoult actually says to *not* speak up about this is demeaning to all women, and you have to do it to fight the patriarchy.
What a terrible person.
I don't have the words to describe how much I hate social media and what it's done to us as a civil society. Plus- our brains seem to have lost a few dozen IQ points.
Sarah Dessen may need to find a new category of fiction to sell her books in, because if her goal was to make a living in YA fiction, that's not working out. She could always get a job for life as a university professor.
And it was a woman who made the complaint in the first place! The patriarchyyyyyyy!!!!!
Good YA books I have read and reviewed recently:
The "Skulduggery Pleasant" books by Derek Landy (which somehow never caught on in the US).
"The Spoken Mage" series by Melanie Cellier
The "Dark Runs" series by J. A. Sutherland.
"The Farshore Chronicles" by Justin Fike
Here's some Dessen prose and insight:
"“Shut up, both of you,” I said, and they laughed again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You are young and so is the night! Carpe diem!” William called out after me as I walked across the patio.
“That means day, William,” my mom said.
“Carpe night, then!” They dissolved into more laughter.
Fine, I thought, as I started across the patio, to the lobby. So what if I did go back to my room and be non-epic, by Jilly’s definition? It had been a long day and weekend, and I was tired. I had all of senior year and college to throw down, if I so chose, and maybe I would. If I didn’t though, it wasn’t my mom and William’s business by any stretch. And really, I was only what they had made me."
YA lit is treated less seriously because it's usually poorly written.
Also, it lacks insight into the human condition.
But at least it gave us shiny vampires.
Sigh. Another day, another rhhardin vindication event.
Please tell me these women are being paid by The Patriarchy© to convince everybody that women really are the irrational, trivial-minded, self-absorbed dimwits that misogynists always said we were.
(Sort of thing that almost makes me support the idea of there being more than two genders, so I wouldn't have to share a sex with these people.)
Apologies are too quickly given these days. Stand up and be counted if you believe something.
Sarah Dessen displays a trait that in my experience handicaps far too many women in the workplace, which is that they confuse how hard they worked with the quality of their output. Given a choice between a programmer whose software meets its requirements and is rapidly debugged and the hardworking programmer who seems to take forever to get enough bugs out that we can integrate the resultant code, it’s pretty obvious what a savvy program manager will prefer on his team.
During the course of a long career in software development I found few men who suffered from the problem of confusing how hard they worked with the value of their output (but the number was, emphatically, not zero), and few women who did not have this issue (but there were women who didn’t, and plenty of women turned out to be educable). If Dessen pours her heart and soul into her story and out comes YA, are we supposed to put her up with a writer like Shakespeare, who cranked out plat after play, sonnet after sonnet, apparently with little effort?
"Authors are real people. We put our heart and soul into the stories we write often because it is literally how we survive in this world. I’m having a really hard time right now and this is just mean and cruel. I hope it made you feel good."
Are you kidding me? No author likes bad reviews but this little very special snowflake whining about some student who didn't like her book? Fuck her.
The author not the student.
I don't even care whether the student's reasons for not liking the book are reasonable. They get to have an opinion and the author MUST accept it.
Isn't that the rule these days? We have to validate everyone's opinion about everything?
It certainly should be with opinions about books. As well as music and pfart in general.
John Henry
Blogger Oso Negro said...
I would pay good money to attend a gathering of Althouse commenters. Best blog around. Don't expect another like it.
Me too.
Certainly one of the best blogs around especially because Ann blogs about so many different topics. But what really makes it best is the comments section and the commenters. Even the ones who are batshit crazy provide some entertainment value.
Look at the comments sections of most blogs, they make Twitter seem like calm and rational discussion.
(I hope I didn't hurt Ann's feelings by saying that it is only "one of the best" and not THE ABSOLUTELY TIP-TOPPIEST BESTEST BLOG EVER!!!. Ann is probably better than that but then, you know how authors can be.)
John Henry
Next up, a quote from Harry Potter.
Soon other prominent authors with hundreds of thousands of followers piled on, including Gay, Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Jenny Han, and Angie Thomas.
Appropriate name - and one that seems to pop up here a lot.
I guggled her and this is what came up:
“Weiner has always been a gifted novelist and a powerful essayist. In Mrs. Everything, she brings the best of both worlds to the page, holding up the prism of choice and letting the light shine through from every angle. If you have time for only one book this summer, pick this one.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
It's on her website and her facebook page. I go to the Times page and there's this caption: "Beach books are the cool aunts of the literary world."
Hint to Times: Your "cool aunt" was never as "cool" as you thought she was or as she thought she was.
The book we read before showing up to my college in 1969 was “Cat’s Cradle.”
In my day, the college reading books had at least a 12th reading level. After all, you were starting college, and could presumably read at that level. And pretty much everyone could. Now days? Not so much. YA books usually have a reduced reading level, and are mostly pitched to a middle school and maybe some high school aged demographic. That authorette’s books fit right in there with her coming of age books. And what about the guys? Her books seem to concentrate on the lives of and what is important to high school girls.
I think that the book that we read the summer before college, a half century (+1) ago, was ”The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal” by Desmond Morris, an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. The book was so named because out of 193 species of monkeys and apes, only humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are not covered in hair. This, along with hair patterns, a flexible spine, and greater buoyancy, suggests a semi aquatic past for our species. Maybe. In any case, arguably a much better book for entering freshmen than some sappy coming of age book.
"F--- that f-----g b----"
The new Vagina Monologues.
Please tell me these women are being paid by The Patriarchy© to convince everybody that women really are the irrational, trivial-minded, self-absorbed dimwits that misogynists always said we were.
I am such an insensitive cad to admire Angel-Dyne's post. But it is perfect.
“The book we read before showing up to my college in 1969 was “Cat’s Cradle.””
Half century now (+1 for me). A bit scary if you stop and think about it. So I mostly don’t. Still, kids I knew in college are having their 50th college reunions now.
Oh, and this just in for snowflakes who need a virtual safe space to shelter them from criticiesm - and that may pay money as well!
"Sarah Dessen may need to find a new category of fiction to sell her books in, because if her goal was to make a living in YA fiction, that's not working out. She could always get a job for life as a university professor."
Maybe should be a little careful there.
College didn't have a group reading thing when I went there. Just what you wound up with in required English courses.
Though a prof acknowledged a parody required English paper of mine that went badly wrong and wound up in a campus literary journal, relatable because everybody had read the play.
What a bullshit college that would apologize. Stick up for your students. No one should attend this college. It’s run by cowards.
And Fuck these whiny authors. Tell them to fuck off and kill them selves if they can’t taje criticism.
Is literary criticism another of those things we can't do any more - lest we hurt the feelings of a struggling writer?
In 1983 I was given a list of books I was expected to have read before I got to college. My professors may have partied too much, but they were old school.
In graduate school at an elite university ten years later, my peers gave their undergraduate students glue-stick poster-making assignments. The humanities crashed and burned spectacularly.
Does anything other than this incident argue more effectively that none of these authors should be read?
YA really is a lesser form. So what? So are mysteries, SF, westerns.
Reading wildswan's descriptions, she sounds like a romance novelist.
“F--- that f-----g b----” fellow author Siobhan Vivian replied to Dessen’s tweet....
What a delightful turn of phrase, no wonder Siobhan Vivian is such a well-known and respected YA author.
(By the way, according to Wikipedia, Ms. Vivian has published nine books since 2008, nearly half of which were written with another person.)
Upon acceptance we were advised to learn to use a log slide rule, and familiarize ourselves with Mark's Mechanical Engineers Handbook.
Scientific calculators were allowed two years later, so the slide rule thing was mostly dropped.
I want to see a required reading assignment of "Away All Boats", Dodson.
That is a real and realistic story of the nature of leadership of a technological enterprise, under intense stress. Which leadership is, presumably, what these trade schools are intended to help develop.
"Perhaps the worst aspect of this story is that Dessen got apologies from the University and from the reporter who put the student's quote in the newspaper story."
What the hell? Has the world gone mad?
YA is written for kids. Why would anyone writing it be upset by that? Don't write for kids if you don't want to be known as someone who writes for kids? What's wrong with writing for kids? Why shouldn't someone headed to college be disappointed that the first assigned reading is a book written for kids?
Soon, everyone will have to apologize to everyone for everything.
Marks Mechanical Engineers Handbook has no characters, so no identifiable men or women. Unlike an Electrical Engineering handbook, say, it is more easily relatable to common observations of phenomena, dealing with such things as strengths of bolts and calculating efficiency of types of engines. These are things easily observed in reality.
I therefore recommend it for neutral pre-college reading, especially for liberal arts majors, in order to diversify their knowledge base and broaden their attitudes.
"What the hell? Has the world gone mad?"
The world is fine, on the whole, but your American elite is in a terminal phase of decadence. This is just an amusing symptom. There are much worse ones.
Thank you for this list.
Never read list:
Authors: Sarah Dessen, Siobhan Vivian, Gay, Picoult, Jennifer Weiner, Jenny Han, and Angie Thomas
Publishers: Penguin Teen
"Temujin said...
"I don't have the words to describe how much I hate social media and what it's done to us as a civil society."
Agree, but: Social media standing alone wouldn't be as big a problem; if you didn't want to engage with it, you could avoid it.
The real cancer is that the old-guard media now treat crap they find on social media as "news." Our hostess got this story from the WaPo, not from social media.
Buwaya: "Away All Boats" looks good, will read, thanks for the tip.
Rowling pitched at everybody. You can point to her flaw, but her books worked. YA has nothing to be ashamed of.
Nothing wrong with YA fiction, but (a) that does not equate with YA fiction generally, or Dessen in particular, being worthy of college study, much less becoming mandatory reading for all college students regardless of major; and (b) the student was not being critical of Dessen or YA fiction she simply didn't think it should be the one and only book required by the school for all students regardless of major.
Why would a school determine that it is super important that every single student read a single, common book, but have so little concern for what the book is that they turn the decision over to 18-21-year-olds?
YA is looked down on, because it aimed at dumb teenagers, who don't have the experience or brains to read adult literature. I got my daughter to skip the whole YA crap, and go directly to Adult books. She later thanked me for it.
Book Summaries of Sarah Dessen's works from her Wikipedia page:
"she meets Owen who helps her out of her comfort zone and reveal her true self"
"she meets Mac who makes her feel like she's noticed for the first time"
"she meets Ambrose, who just might be what she's been looking for all along."
I wonder which knight has the shiniest armor.
College students should be reading real adult fiction. Hell, HS students should be doing that. And "away all boats" is a good book. Its a big relief from over-the-top commercial crap like Mailer's Naked and the Dead, or Shaw's the Young lions.
Automatic_Wing said...
More interesting than the mean girl stuff to me is the revelation that colleges are charging tens of thousands to teach the modern equivalent of Nancy Drew Mysteries
Not true. Nancy Drew Mysteries were readable, and could actually make you think
The "Skulduggery Pleasant" books by Derek Landy (which somehow never caught on in the US).
The first book was a lot of fun. The second book was not. Were there more, and were they more like the first book, or the second?
You all realize, right, that Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome" - " And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds... " - was considered fit reading for what are now middle-school boys.
The Anglo-American culture is in its long decadence.
Nancy drew and the Hardy Boys were YA before there was YA.
Can you say, "It's a slow news day", boys and girls? Yes, I KNEW you could.
The weird thing about Nancy Drew, is the plots were actually written by a guy called Stratomeyer and the novels were then "fleshed out" by contract writers. The first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries - published in 1930 - were rewritten and republished to extend the copy right.
What we read when I was an incoming freshman has long been forgotten, but it certainly wasn't tweener stuff. Was a blue paperback, that I remember, with orange embellishments. What I do remember is for some reason, our classes were held in the faculty lounge building, which I assume was available for an 0800 class. I never sold any of my old textbooks after semesters for the most part. I might go down to my library in the basement and see if I can find it. As it was 1983, it might have had something to do with the Cold War.
Back in the 1980's, our HS English class was given a "College Reading list" which contained about 50 novels/poems that supposedly any college bound student was supposed to be familiar with.
Of course, when i got to college i found none of the Professors and students had the least interest in any of those books.
There is nothing wrong with YA literature- I learned to read by reading things like "The Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew". Of course, I was between the ages of 7 and 10, so I wouldn't expect such books to be on college reading lists. Having perused some of the reviews of the books of the authors named in this article, I am guessing they don't belong on a college reading list either, unless it is for college students in remedial reading comprehension classes.
The "Skulduggery Pleasant" books by Derek Landy (which somehow never caught on in the US).
The first book was a lot of fun. The second book was not. Were there more, and were they more like the first book, or the second?
There continues to be a lot of humor in the books, which are up to #12 now, but they are definitely not happy-go-lucky as one of my reviews addresses with a long quote.
Here are my reviews for Book 10 and Books 11 & 12
Public Universities should just eliminate the liberal arts. Its worthless. You have professors who are running a grift and hate western civilization. And reduce college from 4 years to 3. You can dump all that Freshman Liberal arts crap & send it back to HS. People could then spend 1 year taking general classes before going on their majors for the last 2 years. It's save everyone a fortune, without any loss.
buwaya said...
I want to see a required reading assignment of "Away All Boats", Dodson.
That is a real and realistic story of the nature of leadership of a technological enterprise, under intense stress. Which leadership is, presumably, what these trade schools are intended to help develop.
I would pair it with "The Caine Mutiny", which is an excellent portrayal of what can happen when leadership isn't doing it's job.
I was a freshman in college in 1984-85.
Here is the reading list I had that year in all my composition literature/history courses that I can remember off the top of my head, and this is just the fiction/poetry:
Anna Karenina, The Double, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamozov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from the Underground, The Heart of Darkness, Huckleberry Finn, The Wasteland (Eliot) and accompanying literary analysis, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Illiad and The Odyssey, My Antonia, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Collected Works of John Keats, and this is just what I can remember reading at the time looking back 35 years later.
By next Tuesday I want a three page analysis of the shirtless man on the cover of "Passion Unbridled". Particular emphasis should be placed on his wind blown locks.
After all we can't disrespect the genre of romance novels, can we?
I am seeing more people who can afford it sending their kids off to college overseas.
The correct zoological term for these zoological creatures is "subadult", not "young adult".
"Here are my reviews for Book 10 "
"and an American President who is absolutely not Donald Trump"
I've got an Amazon.uk account, so I don't have a problem with getting an ebook version.
But I have a big problem with giving my money to GOP bashers.
tl:dr; If an author wants my money, (s)he can keep her politics to herself, or it can match mine.
How much politics / "lefty social criticism" is in these books?
Thanks!
I'm a published author. One of the rules of being an author is, never argue with bad reviews.
I'm shocked at the author's entitlement. She goes on about her feelings. If you are so delicate you can't handle criticism of your work you should find another career. It's your work, not you, and you put it out there. Not everyone is going to like it.
Of course, she only did that because it worked. If I complained about a bad review and how cruel it was no one would care. So, it's not being mean that matters, it's being mean to someone with the power to come after you.
If she wanted to defend her work and why it is good enough to be on a reading list, fine. But complaining about criticism implies the book is bad and the only defense is the author's identity. It's an argument from authority, and the student better get back in line.
How much politics / "lefty social criticism" is in these books?
Well, your milage may vary. I would say "some". You have the Trump parody thing, but he isn't onscreen all that much. Then you have the "if you live long enough, you tend to become bisexual" thing and one character who can't seem to choose a gender. Interestingly, all of the actual politics that matters to the magic users tends to be brute force and Machiavellian. Mundane world politics don't really figure in the story very often.
The only affectionate treatment of Trump I have seen in SF so far is Logan Jacobs mens' adventure pulp "Arena" series.
a parody required English paper of mine that went badly wrong and wound up in a campus literary journal
Link, PLLEEASE!
Even better than Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew: Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators.
I doubt any of the authors of the above series had a chip on their shoulder, or expected to be considered "important." They just wrote great books for young people.
Interestingly, all of the actual politics that matters to the magic users tends to be brute force and Machiavellian. Mundane world politics don't really figure in the story very often.
Which is what I would expect, if the writer isn't going out of his or her way to piss off the readers
Would Harold Bloom reread Sarah Dessen?
Oh come on. You know he had a copy of "Keeping the Moon" inside that Proust book cover.
@buwaya, she's a good ship, a fortunate ship.
"she's a good ship, a fortunate ship."
True Big Mike. I've heard her talk.
The student said Dessen's work was "OK for teenage girls," but not for college students. If there's any point to assigning a common reading, it's to get students to read something worth discussing that they haven't already read in middle or high school. Of course, male students typically don't read YA books for girls. I see no reason to make them do so at the age of 18.
In addition to Bryan Stevenson's "Just Mercy," which was chosen, reports the Post, the student also argued for “Breath, Eyes, Memory” by Edwidge Danticat and “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi.
"if you live long enough, you tend to become bisexual"
or at least bye-bye sexuals...
Buwaya,
I spent 4 weeks, 8 hours a day plus 2-3 hours homework in a navy prep school for the nuclear program.
A large part of that was learning how to use a slide rule. You would not believe the amount of math, all done on slide rules, went into running a reactor in the late 60s.
I still have the slide rule and trid to give it to my daughter when she went off to Engineering school in 93. She just laughed.
I think it would be a good idea to make every 9th grader learn to do math with a slide rule. Using a slide rule is to useing a calculator as using a map is to using GPS.
Both get you there, but with a slide rule/map you understand the process. You need to have some idea of the answer before you even start to use the slide rule.
Re Away All Boats, I remember the movie as a kid with Jeff Chandler. The full movie is on youtube. I'll download and watch it.
I'd like to read the book but it is not available in Kindle and I can't read paper anymore.
I served on a ship just like the one in Away All Boats. Thousands were built. Mine was configured for cargo. The one in AAB for people but otherwise the same.
John Henry
I even did a video on sliderules. "The Case of the Slippery Stick"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36n3igQiPm8
Discussing my point about slipsticks vs calculators
John Henry
Blogger buwaya said...
"she's a good ship, a fortunate ship."
True Big Mike. I've heard her talk.
Was that on the way between Apathy and Tedium or on one of the side trips to Ennui or Monotony?
John Henry
Was that on the way between Apathy and Tedium or on one of the side trips to Ennui or Monotony?
Sounds like someone has been reading The Phantom Tollbooth...
I have long since upgraded from slide rules to calculators to Visicalc-Multiplan-Lotus-Excel, which has long been my favorite thing for making sense of the world, from when Bill Gates himself sold me on it.
I have been tempted into many betrayals of this great love, various fancy coquettes have turned my head, but I always come back to Excel.
I remember being a Young Adult. What I remember is in what contempt we held the people who supposedly wrote books for us.
We didn't want that crap. We wanted to read adult books.
Still do.
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