When I shared that notion – that evil is a matter of mismatched expectations – with some colleagues in a conversation, they thought I was making a joke. It’s not intended as one. Indeed, it is a somewhat frightening, and certainly disconcerting, idea to countenance
Lengths and Forms
Working within those forms is part of managing reader expectations, which is a key component of making a story appeal to a given reader, but the expectations we have around form and length of stories are not derived from some optimization method synchronized with humanity’s ability to interact with literature.
What Makes a Classic?
There will necessarily be changes to the list of classics from time to time, and doubtless many factors must contribute to making a book a 'classic', but we should be able to come up with a rigorous definition that will endure. To do that, we need to understand what we're even trying to accomplish by categorizing something as 'classic.'
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Review
As promised last week, this will be our review for Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as a whole, assembled trilogy. We’ll be talking in more detail about the story as a whole, and the writing specifically, across all three books.
IGC Publishing 