Dæmon Voices #review and my #reading in November

Philip Pullman’s Dæmon Voices – Essays on Storytelling is pleasurable reading for English teachers, students, writers and anyone who loves stories. Best known for the trilogy, His Dark Materials, Pullman has a deep, highly practical understanding of what it takes to craft a story to delight both novice and experienced teachers of writing. His obvious […]

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#UtopiaforRealists #review and my #reading in May

Consider this: The word utopia means both “good place” and “no place.” What we need are alternative horizons that spark the imagination. And I do mean horizons in the plural; conflicting utopias are the lifeblood of democracy, after all. …in the revolutionary year of 1968, when young demonstrators the world over were taking to the […]

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The Handmaid’s Tale #review and my #reading in April

“Our big mistake was teaching them to read. We won’t do that again.” The Handmaid’s Tale p. 307 I suspected re-reading The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood prior to viewing the Tribeca film festival premiere of the new tv series was potentially risky. It is such a great book that this latest adaption – and there have been many – could […]

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The Green Bell #review and my #reading in March

This is my madness, and I can’t tell it as it is. Madness is anti-story, anti-chronology, anti-plot, anti-character. It breaks language. It throws mud in the face. It makes story impossible. The minds within the mind won’t let me be. I know Michael in my soul while at the same time I don’t know him […]

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The End of Eddy #review and my #reading in February

…the village, far from the city with its movement and activity, was also sheltered from the passage of time… From my childhood I have no happy memories. I don’t mean to say that I never, in all of those years, felt any happiness or joy. But suffering is all-consuming: it somehow gets rid of anything […]

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My #reading December 2016

Why shouldn’t we separate children as young as seven or eight into two groups: those few children who are “gifted and talented” and the many, many more who aren’t? What harm is there, really, in a talent show being named a “talent show”? In my view, the biggest reason a preoccupation with talent can be […]

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My #reading November 2016

When the Europeans arrived in the Sydney region, writes Aboriginal activist and elder Burnum Burnum, ‘they landed in the middle of a huge art gallery’. On the shorelines today, in the national parks and reserves, and even silently underlying suburbia, are more than 10 000 artworks, carved or painted on stone. Sydney is the world’s […]

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My #reading October 2016

The upgrading of humans into gods may follow any of three paths: biological engineering, cyborg engineering and the engineering of non-organic beings. …in an upgraded world you will feel like a Neanderthal hunter in Wall Street. You won’t belong. I read Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari on my kindle and highlighted […]

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My #reading September 2016

“I came to the realisation that there was a major disconnect between leadership and teaching, and between teaching and learning. I realised I needed to know more about learning, how teaching facilitates this, and how teaching can be supported by leaders, whose main function shouldn’t be management.”         Prof. Stephen Dinham Leading […]

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My #reading: August 2016

The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work by Mats Alvesson, André Spicer “Our thesis in this book is that many organisations are caught in the stupidity paradox: they employ smart people who end up doing stupid things. This can produce good results in the short term, but can pave the way […]

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My #reading: July 2016

Historians indeed hope that their books might entwine intimately with the lives of their readers and that their histories may sit on bedside tables ready to enter dreams. History – that unending dialogue between the present and the past – is essential to human consciousness. It is conducted as part of the daily business of […]

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My #reading: June 2016

“This is to be a sort of diary or book of notes. When I have finished filling these pages, I shall burn them. But if they should happen to survive, lets hope they fall into the hands of some curiosity-driven chatterbox of a writer; what’s it to me? The world concerns me not at all, […]

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My #reading: May 2016

Schopenhauer argued that the best books deserved two readings. The second allowed for finer, more reflective interpretations, as the beginning was read in light of the end and the whole work in a new mood.   Damon Young Last month was spent in the USA; my first visit. Travelling alone, on my study tour, there was […]

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