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Category Archives: Community Voices
The Cranky Curmudgeon: Imagination Isn’t Everything
Maybe it’s an artifact of my odd reading selections, but in comparing classic works with many of the more modern stories I’ve been reading lately, I’ve noticed a trend toward highly imaginative (fantastic) settings with fairly simplistic philosophical underpinnings. It’s as if authors are selling out to cool visuals at the expense of challenging questions; as if pace is a substitute for substance; as if conflict is inherently interesting and requires no consequence.
I think I disagree. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it. Continue reading
Posted in Community Voices, SF&F corner, YA corner
21 Comments
Book Reviews on the Internet: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Recently, a discussion cropped up in the comments section on a book review posted on another blog. The commenter noted that both the person reviewing the book, along with the other commenters, were generally heaping praise on the book while … Continue reading
Posted in Community Voices, Electronic Age, Mormon LitCrit
Tagged audience response, Blogging, Literary Criticism
5 Comments
Bryan Mark Taylor’s 200 Paintings
Guest post by Theric Jepson Bryan Mark Taylor is still young yet already a leading name in West Coast plein air painting. Best known for his California coasts and Utah mountains and San Francisco cityscapes and Italy rustics (to name … Continue reading
2e || !2e: One Reader’s First eBook Encounter
I’ve been reading books on computer screens for about two decades, starting with book-length manuscripts in a word processor, moving to PDFs and hypertext books, and even using the Kindle app on my PC to read classics. But this was my first full eBook experience for a novel on a handheld reader. And it was more jarring than I expected. Continue reading
The Mormon Ibsen: A Tribute to Eric Samuelsen
When I discovered that Eric Samuelsen was retiring from BYU as the playwriting professor, I have to admit a little bit of my heart broke. In many ways it may the best decision. From what I understand, Eric’s battle with … Continue reading
A Short Stay in Hell with The Scholar of Moab
A reader response meander by a literary luddite. I have become a fan of Dr. Steven L. Peck based on his books The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell. Well, mostly a fan. Okay, a conflicted fan. … Continue reading
Posted in Community Voices, Mormon LitCrit
18 Comments
History as Fiction, Fiction as History
A few weeks ago, A Motley Vision provided a quote from an 1897 publication by Junius Wells in which he discusses the idea of books as ‘companions’ and urges his readers to reconsider the type of company they keep when … Continue reading
An Apolitical Discussion about Mormons and Politics and Literature
I recently had a long political discussion on Facebook. The person I was talking with, also a practicing Latter-day Saint, disagreed with me on pretty much every current issue. But my point in continuing the discussion was not to finally … Continue reading
The Language of Our Fathers (or You Should See What I Hear)
In an increasingly visual and auditory media environment it’s to our advantage to keep tabs on the written word as a precise and clear set of symbol for the underlying concepts. Continue reading
Posted in Community Voices, Funny Stuff, Thoughts on Language
3 Comments
The New Mormon Faithful
At first the shift was subtle. After an age of the high profile excommunications of certain Mormon intellectuals, and when Mormon faithfulness was considered to be contained within a very narrow set of boundaries, it’s understandable there may be some … Continue reading →