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The Uses of Convention

The Uses of Convention

Nick Cole's Strange Company 3 is coming out April, so I started reading the first Strange Company again this week. And that got me to thinking about the use of convention in telling stories. We cannot truly understand literary genres without understanding the conventions that comprise them. Yet

Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords

Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords

The 50th Anniversary Edition of Adrian Cole's The Dream Lords will release on Amazon on January 15th, 2025, and you, my loyal readers, simply must pick this up, because this is the book for anyone who wanted Dune to be a comedy instead of a tragedy. If you

WBH Digest 2025-01-03: Welcome to the Party Pal

WBH Digest 2025-01-03: Welcome to the Party Pal

Welcome to 2025! When I started my commentary on Northrop Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism, I thought to myself that I could write about it for a year at least. That has absolutely come true, with the first post coming just over a year ago now, and I&

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

Frieren and Dungeon Meshi: Beyond Romance's End

The society emerging at the conclusion of comedy represents, by contrast, a kind of moral norm, or pragmatically free society. Its ideals are seldom defined or formulated: definition and formulation belong to the humors, who want predictable activity. We are simply given to understand that the newly-married couple will live

With Both Hands Classics: Harry Potter

With Both Hands Classics: Harry Potter

I have recently been listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks with my youngest son. He loved them so much that we listened to all seven books all the way through five or six times before I managed to finally get him to listen to something else [Percy Jackson to the

A Bad Case of Dead by Jim Breyfogle

A Bad Case of Dead by Jim Breyfogle

Jim Breyfogle's A Bad Case of Dead is in some ways a very traditional romance in a Victorian setting. We find a grim and dirty, but quite lively London with many economic opportunities available to the bold and the lucky. Queen Victoria's overseas dominions give Englishmen

WBH Monthly Digest 2024-04-05: Letters to Garcia

WBH Monthly Digest 2024-04-05: Letters to Garcia

Life currently prevents the weekly digest from being weekly, but I've got so much good stuff saved up for these that something has to give. I've noted before the Letter to Garcia is a Sorelian myth, in that it enables action even if the historical facts