Well, actually just a little to this particular corner of it. Most of the time the content on this site seems entirely random and haphazard. All too often it actually is. Little planning or forethought goes into it and that effects the quality. As part of a sort of New Year’s Resolution I discussed bringing some focus to this site by reading more from a particular author and on particular subjects. And that idea is about to come to fruition.
The first focus, or theme if you will, of this year is myths and fables. The idea is to explore in both fiction and non, the idea and practice of myths, fables, and stories. Now, I am not an academic and don’t plan on presenting an online seminar or anything. It just means my reading, and thus my reviews, will be tied together by this thread. Not all of it necessarily, but a chunk of it.
Just to give you a taste of what is coming, here are some of the books that will be reviewed and discussed in the coming days and weeks:
- Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
- The Magician’s Book: a Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller
- The Narnian by Alan Jacobs
- A number of books from Cannongate Myth Series
- A number of young adult fantasy books.
I hope to be able to have the time and energy to write about all of this in a way that presents a semi-coherent theme. Not by explicitly tying them all together but simply by allowing you to see the similar ideas and threads that naturally connect them.
I also have planned some reading on intellectuals I have long admired and studied. Two in particular I will be reading on this year are William F. Buckley and George F. Kennan. So stay tuned for that as well.
I hope this process will help me focus my writing and at the same time make reading this site more enjoyable and interesting. Maybe the miscellany will be a little more collected that way.
