books – recycled paper clips

Book Review: “The Secret Life of Stories: How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the way we Read

This book’s greatest strengths and greatest drawbacks are intertwined. For example, rather than focusing on a detailed look at the function of disability in a few texts, Bérubé moves quickly between a huge range books, leaving me with the impression that I don’t fully understand his arguments, but also giving me effectively a reading listContinue reading “Book Review: “The Secret Life of Stories: How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the way we Read”

The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison: A reader’s thoughts

I am finding The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison frustrating. Less the letters themselves, than the context in which they are presented. It feels to me like John F Callahan, Ellison’s literary executor, is, or is at least attempting to be, the owner of a monopoly on all things Ralph Ellison, which in a senseContinue reading “The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison: A reader’s thoughts”

A First Glance at: “First Person” Putin’s Self-Portrait

So far (I’m about half-way in) “Volodya” as he is mostly called, seems to be a fairly typical product of his environment. As he himself says, “I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education,” an interesting remark because it implies that he at least partially sees through that patriotic brainwashing, andContinue reading “A First Glance at: “First Person” Putin’s Self-Portrait”