Gorgeous morning. I talked about education a bit. Again.
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I often wonder if the fixation on finding a magical technology that will fix everything and make every student a genius is just the result of the real issues (of poor quality lessons and a lack of will to change how we approach learning, etc) being scary looking and hard to fix. Hence we keep looking for a magic bullet and have this black and white, all or nothing approach. God forbid we use technology to augment existing lessons as we move towards different approaches to teaching and learning. Much better to just keep on chasing that magic pill 🙁
Just a quick nitpick: Bach didn’t go deaf. (That was Beethoven.) Bach did slowly go blind, though.
I claim Brain Cloud.
I am about as far from Debora Geary’s demographic as they come. I have for almost thirty years read almost only Space Opera. I read Debora’s first book based solely on your suggestion that I might like it. I laughed and splurged the whole 99 cents to purchase it and the hook was set. I am now a huge fan of hers. I had not read or listened to your Ravenwood prior to that because I do not do fantasy it is almost all santanic and I am not into that. I guess I was stereo typing the whole genre because of some past bad experience’s. I am of course now a huge Tanyth fan.
You just keep recommending I will decide if I will read or not. Don’t worry I will still be your fan.
Interesting take, John.
I never thought of fantasy as satanic, but then … I had a rather a-social upbringing. There’s very little that I would consider satanic. It would sort of require me to believe that there was a Satan and that comes with a lot of other accoutrements that I’m just not in the market for.
Me? I don’t like horror. It’s just not scary and I’ve not read any that really got me. I even went thru an HP Lovecraft phase. Yawn. Shoggoth and all. meh.
Now, I don’t read anything that has a vampire, an angel, a werewolf, or a zombie. I make some exceptions for Jim Butcher, but not many.
Is there a Deb Geary book that you particularly recommend, Nate? I guess just start with A Modern Witch?
I’ve only recently gotten back into fantasy (mostly Lynch, Abercrombie, Rothfuss, Sanderson type stuff). I read a bit when I was small (like LotR, Icewind Dale, Dragonlance Chronicles, Pern, etc) but then fell out of it and into sci fi. I think I kept coming across the same boring high elf stuff and weak LotR clones (they may not have been but from the sample set I had, it seemed that way). I ended up reading pretty much only hard sf and some horror.
I never find horror scarey, mostly amusing/interesting so I do read a bit. I guess, as with everything, if the story is interesting and has good characters (and the genre trappings don’t get in the way), I’m happy.
Yes, Stephen, A Modern Witch … it’s her “Quarter Share” so perhaps not her strongest work but it lays the foundation for the books that follow.
hey StephenK, you do know Pern isn’t technically fantasy… it’s Sci-Fi 😉
I usually pass on the fantasy as well, but make an exception for Kevin Hearne’s “Iron Druid” series. He tells a great, creative story with a Celtic focus.
Never checked those out. I think I’ll pick up a copy of Hounded. Thanks for the tip Chong Go 🙂
I’d have to suggest for the OP looking to get into fantasy, that he check out the Narnia Chronicles. Hard to claim a noted Anglican theologian is writing satanic stuff.
(Well, ok, there’s the Screwtape Letters, but those aren’t really so much satanic as precautionary.)
Very good point, and for those who don’t subscribe to any of the various flavors of that faith the stories don’t exactly bash you over the head with “Hey this is our theology”.