Stephen Leeds is a truly unique individual. There are forty-seven people (and counting) living in his house, each of whom specialize in different things, like botany, biology, security, psychology, handwriting analysis, etc. These people have personalities and talents and fears and all come from different cultures and religious backgrounds. And all of them are hallucinations. Stephen doesn’t really have multiple personality disorder, because he is completely aware of and actively participates in the maintaining of his aspects. He uses them as a sort of extension […]
Louis Kept Changing the Title to “Who We Aren’t” on Copies at that One Book Signing. Which is Interesting.
Of course there will always be differences between the publicly presented images of a person and who they really are, especially if the person in question is a public figure, celebrity, etc. So while it truly feels like the boys of One Direction want to be genuine about who they are as people, what they want to say, and how they want to grow and progress in their music, there is still something so controlled about how they are managed and how One Direction™ is […]
Better, but still not quite there.
I liked this better than the first one, especially at the end. This was bound to happen since I’m spending so much time with these characters, and Abraham is a consistent, talented writer. The first half continued a lot of the issues I had with the first book, though, so I can’t really give this four stars. Maybe the third book will earn it? It’s been a little over a year since the start of the series. Geder Palliako has gone from social pariah to […]
Sore Thumbs
This year I started teaching a class of Seniors. It had long been a goal, and now I got to do it. I wanted to create as much of a collegiate simulacrum as I could. So I brewed up some lectures and led each week of instruction, discussion and reflection around a prominent theme in literature generally–with specific attention paid to African-American experiences (slightly awkward for a transparently white guy to do for a class full of black kids). And to guide my lecture creation […]
I want to be friends with Amy Poehler
As far as I can tell, I’m the fifth Cannonballer so far to read and review Amy Poehler’s new book Yes, Please. I’m a huge fan of Parks and Recreation and the episode where Ann and Chris leave nearly destroyed me, because Ann and Leslie’s friendship in many ways reminds me so much of that between me and my best friend Lydia (who unfortunately lives across the Atlantic in New York City). I’ve liked Amy Poehler in Mean Girls and on SNL, and I love […]
Adoption is a serious business, but it can be very entertaining to read about
I’ve been reading Dan Savage’s Savage Love for years and years now, and when I’m in the mood for Podcasts (which I have to admit, I rarely am, I just can’t seem to get into them, it puzzles me greatly), I often listen to his Savage Lovecast. He’s generally quite open about himself, his life and his experiences, so I already knew that he was married and that they had an adopted child. My BFF Lydia recommended this audio book to me when I visited her […]