Well, we are a little over a month into the school year and I‘ve already had a student tear through the first Mistborn trilogy while I am crawling through book 3.

On the one hand that‘s kind of awesome, but on the other I now live in fear of spoilers.

#TeachersOfLitsy

Hey friends! My new position teaching 8th grade English continues to gobble up my time like some kind of greedy time-gobbling thing. After a week I‘m still less than 150 pages into Mistborn book 3. So anyways, here‘s a picture of a new acquisition, paired with the hope that everyone in the Listyverse is doing well.

Steven Universe: The Movie premieres tonight on Cartoon Network and you could say that I‘m a little excited...

#BelieveInSteven #KeepBeachCityWeird

The end of The Well of Ascension was supposed to be full of surprising twists, but it left me more confused than anything, and I revisited it last night so that I would be mentally ready to wrap up the Mistborn trilogy.

#Starting

“‘This is damn good wine,‘ she said, picking up another bottle. ‘What did you say it's called?‘ She peered at the label. ‘Chateau Maison? Chat-eau . . . that's foreign for cat's water, you know, but that's only their way, I know it ain't real cat's water. Real cat's water is sharper.‘ She hammered the cork into the bottle with the end of her knife, then stuck her finger over the neck and gave it a vigorous shaking ‘to mix the goodness in.‘”

“Many tall women accessible by stepladder across the continent had reflected how odd it was that the dwarfs, a race to whom the aforesaid art of seduction consisted in the main part of tactfully finding out what sex, underneath all that leather and chain-mail, another dwarf was, had generated someone like Casanunda.”

Art of Giamo Casanunda (the Disc‘s 2nd greatest lover (but he tries harder)) by Paul Kidby from the Discworld Imaginarium #DiscRead

“You make us want what we can‘t have & what you give us is worth nothing & what you take is everything & all there is left for us is the cold hillside, & emptiness, & the laughter of the elves.”

The elves of Discworld are the most genuinely frightening villains in the series so far. The witches three find themselves in the fight of their lives when a midsummer night‘s play unleashes these cruel beautiful monsters on the eve of Magrat‘s wedding.

I just finished a China Miéville short story about a secretive group of therapists that also act as assassins, clinically murdering individuals that get in the way of their patients‘ healing process.

It is possibly the closest I‘ve ever seen him get to outright comedy. Just wanted to share.

#Starting Discworld 14 #DiscRead

China wrote a weirdo science fiction story in the format of a college syllabus because he is a mad genius. Enjoy. #Mievillains

Even though it was the standard Gene Wolfian nigh-impenetrable mystery box, I felt a bit more prepared for the narrative shenanigans of In Green‘s Jungles than I was with On Blue‘s Waters.

Have Horn and Silk merged personalities which was alluded to in the previous book? Decidedly yes. How? Eh, says Wolfe, it‘s really not that important.

Reptilian space vampires! Oreb is back! Dream teleportation! New Sun references!!! One more book to go.

While his plots are obscure, Wolfe always writes about spiritual matters with brilliant clarity.

Just as Severian investigated & evaluated his relationships with the Increate and the Conciliator (roughly God & Jesus) in the Book of the New Sun, Patera Silk casts off the false gods of Mainframe to follow the one true God, the Outsider, in the Book of the Long Sun.

Horn, his protégé, continues that relationship here in the Book of the Short Sun.

Been awhile since I posted #bookdoodles

We had an all-day workshop, and, while paying studious attention of course, I was also writing down the titles of all of Iain M. Banks‘ Culture novels (I can never remember what order Surface Detail and Matter come in) and some quotes from Frankenstein and The Tempest.

Plus the requisite Coheed & Cambria keywork.

My students asked me what this is about.
*deep breath*

Horn (in-universe author of the previous 4 books) set out to find Silk (who the 4 books were about). Silk and Horn merge minds in a vague way.

Now he‘s Incanto (or Rajan in the previous book) & is writing about things that are happening to him as well as what happened to him in the past while sometimes skipping ahead to mention things he will be telling us about later.

Also space vampires.

#Starting

I am well aware that my current headspace might not be conducive to a super-dense science fantasy with multiple layers of unreliable narrators and text that will need to be continually reread to unlock its mysteries... but that‘s just how Gene Wolfe rolls and I‘m still aiming to finish his 12-book Solar Cycle this year.

This will be the first of his books that I‘ve read since his passing...

Book hangover is REAL, folks. I don‘t read many romances, and after just finishing a book* with lush prose and passion so hot the pages singed my fingers, Miranda in Milan, a sequel to Shakespeare‘s The Tempest, just couldn‘t compare.

The insta-love between Miranda and her magical maid, the flat prose, and - oof - a solid almost 50-page block of exposition near the end, were balanced somewhat by some truly lovely sentiments about Caliban.

The Champions just hanging out and watching Avatar: The Last Airbender was glorious.

🎵Secret secret secret secret tunnel!🎵

Hey! I finished something! And it was great!

Marvel has been collecting these 12 issue trades of teen friendly titles and selling them for super cheap and I have been snatching them up for my classroom library.

The Champions are a great team of kids who focus more on Social Justice issues that supervillains. A perfect mix of fun, funny, thoughtful, and serious.

Highly recommended.

Friends! Littens! How are you? Do people still read books now? Is that still a thing?

I know it's only been 2 weeks but it feels like forever since I've had the time to post. Dealing with a new position in a new school with a new curriculum has consumed a diabolical amount of time.

Even though the move was not by choice, I am teaching kids & I get to talk about reading all day, so I am doing okay.

Hope all is well with you folks too.

#OpenHouse #8thGrade #TeachersOfLitsy

#OpenHouse #8thGrade #TeachersOfLitsy

#OpenHouse #8thGrade #TeachersOfLitsy

Ready to go! #OpenHouse #8thGrade #TeachersOfLitsy

My Summer Break officially ends today so tonight, as is my yearly tradition, I‘m watching Jacques Tati's Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.

Sending good thoughts out to all teachers who are heading back to their classrooms in the coming days!

#NonbookishPost #TeachersOfLitsy

#Starting this continuation of The Tempest which will wrap up my #SummerOfShort2

“I sing myself out to you, and my talons clutch the branch, and I am wrung out until your next letter gives me breath, fills me to bursting.”

This short novel is composed of the passionately poetic letters sent between cybernetic Red & biotech Blue, 2 operatives on opposing sides of a Time War. At first they taunt, then slowly fall in love all while trying to ensure that the other‘s future never comes to pass.

For fans of elaborate lyrical prose

Literally just finished this and oh man what an afterglow.

Those last lines of the Acknowledgments up there might just be my new mantra.

Gonna review it tomorrow and just ride the book hangover for now.

#SummerOfShort2

Glorious art and a solid story with some very sweet moments about Chewbacca and a precocious kid teaming up to save her dad and eventually their whole planet.

Back home after a week at Ocean Isle Beach on the North Carolina coast. Beach reading is not a thing with a 5 year old and a 2 year old, but I still managed to turn some pages after the kids were in bed.

I want to finish my current read and get through one more before my #SummerOfShort2 ends and it‘s back to work in my new position on Thursday.

Stopped by our beach book stop before having some crazy good Jamaican food at the Sugar Shack!

We‘re currently wrapping up a week at the North Carolina coast and we took a trip up to Wilmington today and took the kiddos to the Fort Fisher Aquarium, dinner at Flaming Amy‘s Burrito Barn (Have you ever been there @saresmoore ? Wilmington is your neck of the woods, right? Anyway, the food was was fantastic!), and then went to a Books-A-Million.

I got all of these super cheap for my new 8th grade classroom.

“Words can wound - but they‘re bridges, too. (Like the bridges that are all that Genghis left behind.) Though maybe a bridge can also be a wound? To paraphrase a prophet: Letters are structures, not events. Yours give me a place to live inside.” - Red

#SummerOfShort2

12 does the lapels thing! 10 can‘t handle the lapels thing!

Also confirmation that Clara is a Slytherin.

First of all, the title is a cheap trick. The War Doctor has a very brief cameo, but this is 10, 11, and 12‘s adventure.

The plot itself is a little much, but oh man does Who veteran Paul Cornell nail the dialogue and the dynamic of these three Doctors. 12 gets all the best lines, calling 10 and 11 “manic pixie dream Doctors” and “Posh Doctor and Baby Doctor” which makes 12 “Scary Doctor”.

Good fun for knowledgeable Whovians. Not for newbies.

“Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?

Sometimes I think that‘s what I have instead of friends.” - Blue

#SummerOfShort2

Pardon my full-on geekery for a moment, but I thought anyone not following Comicon might want to know the newly announced Marvel movies and TV shows.

Other big news:
Jeffrey Wright is Uatu the Watcher! Mahershala Ali is Blade! Natalie Portman is back for Thor 4! Doctor Strange 2 is a horror movie costarring Scarlet Witch! Black Widow takes place after Cap: Civil War and Taskmaster will be the villain! The Eternals cast is just absurd!

Carry on.

#dedication #SummerOfShort2

So excited to be #starting this beauty!

#SummerOfShort2

Stop me if you‘ve heard this one: a priestess, a knight, a mage, an archer, & a thief set off to defeat a Dark Lord. Same old same old, but then...

along comes a spider.

& suddenly we‘re investigating issues of faith, toxic masculinity, otherness, empathy, & all the many shades of gray in the classic fantasy Light/Dark binary with complex characters & a twisty plot.

Also somehow it‘s really funny. $5 on Kindle. Highest recommendation.

That awkward moment when you realize you missed the Dark Lord‘s throne room...

#SummerOfShort2

#OilChangeRead

Imagine if one of the Mirkwood spiders ended up joining the dwarves and Bilbo on their quest -

wait, no, imagine The Last Unicorn, but this time it‘s a giant spider dealing with being remade into human form -

Oh! No, this totally the fantasy equivalent of a Murderbot book! It deals with a lot of the same themes and situations, just with magic instead of lasers.

This book rules so far, by the way.

#SummerOfShort2

#SummerOfShort2

Some beautiful #bookmail came to make my day. I‘m so excited about this one that I‘m going to do something super rare for me and actually start this as soon as I finish my current read.

#MovingIn #NewJob #TeachersOfLitsy

The fact that I still made progress in Spiderlight through the big birthday weekend speaks to its awesomeness. My kiddos turned 5 and 2 (they are 3 years and 1 day apart) and much fun was had by all!

#NonbookishPost

Beneath the Sugar Sky used up the last bookmark from my Princess Bride deck so now I‘m going to start using a Princess Mononoke deck for bookmarks.

I didn‘t know this before opening it, but the cards tell the story sequentially which is amazing.

Let me see if I can adequately explain why I‘m so very excited about #starting this book...

The summary on the back makes it sound like the most boring tropey Tolkien rip-off fantasy imaginable, but I know the author‘s style well enough to know that this is all just set-up so he can mess with expectations.

It sounds so bland that I know it‘s going to be WILD.

#SummerOfShort2

This whole short story, “The 9th Technique”, is freaking insane, but I thought this paragraph worked as a mini horror tale all on its own.

Trust China to take caterpillar metamorphosis and turn it into unleaded nightmare fuel.

This continuation of Every Heart a Doorway picks up after the murders at Eleanor West‘s Home for Wayward Children, a school for kids who found doorways to other worlds that felt like home and have now been cast back into ours.

A timey-wimey problem means some students must break the school‘s “No quests” rule and travel to the Land of the Dead and from there to a land of soda seas and brownie soil.

I loved it, maybe even more than the 1st 2.