“Oh. There’s a test today? Anyone have a pen I can borrow?” *throws some change in a cup and picks up a Blue Book*
And yeh, I didn’t buy the books for the course, either. I was a real snot, sometimes.
It’s a Thing, Ya Know. . .
It’s been several years since I have been “trapped” by a listserv-posted novel. New chapters (or just pieces of new chapters, in some cases) posted at regular or irregular intervals, as the writer is able or as the writer simply feels like doing, just does not appeal to me, especially since everything is usually first draft, unedited.
But. . . yeh. in my sporadic armchair pseudo-anthropological dabbling in understanding the background of a subset of 20-something or 30-nothing grups, I usually read some litrpg/isekai/wuxia fiction each week, out of the usual 10+ books of various genres (including a few non-fiction from varied subject lines). So, I was snagged by a Royal Road thread featuring a variation of isekai-wuxia I had not run across before. Only 20 chapters on RR, so. . . Patreon. But no, not paying $8/month to have instant access to new material, etc. The book is better-written and more interesting than 90% of the its genre, but not THAT musch better-written or interesting.
Winds of Destiny: A Cultivator’s Odyssey. Fluff, but entertaining and not even nearly as badly-written as most normally published self-pubs available on Amazon.
“I do not think that means what you think it means.”
Grammar exercise for the day. Diagram:
“After a long sleepless night, [Character Name] comes across a man chasing a woman thief named [Other Character Name], who soon becomes [Personal Possessive Pronoun] loyal ally in the wild.” Lil clue: as it (rather much) later turns out, the sentence does not actually say what the writer intended. *smh*
Ain’t Got Time for This Crap
Any writer that wants to be paid for their work and yet
- Disrespects their readers by typing crap and
- NOT hiring a literate proofreader/editor
should be taken behind the woodshed for a wee bit of “education.”
(The spur this time was “Senor” for “Señor”. . . after too many other execrable stupidities. Just not going to read anything else by this producer of stuff unworthy of even being used for fertilizer.)
To Sum Up. . .
I am constantly amazed at folks who just see no benefit from even such simple maths as algebra, trig, geometry, etc., in their daily lives. There was a brief point in my life, college calculus classes, when I could pretty much just look at a simple math problem and know the answer. (Gave my prof fits, ‘cos I rarely wrote down the steps to achieve the answer. . . cos I hadn’t thought of ’em.) But. . . word problems in that class that attempted to use semi-sorta “real world” situations where different calculus functions could be used to solve things were not so much my metier at the time.
Time passed, as is its wont, and everyday circumstances took on “math meaning” in my perceptions more and more often, until not a day passes that something doesn’t trigger algebraic, “trig-ic” *heh*, differential. . .-ic ?, or whatever thoughts.
“Misunderedumacation” An’t Nuthin’ New
Impressions of grade school from my childhood. . . First grade (kindergarten? Never heard of that, at least not until vague references when I was in high school): two different schools. First one: only three memorable things, two negative, one (square dancing) just kinda *meh*.
Second school: Stupid Books™ in classroom library (fortunately Walter Farley books had addicted me to the town library by then, so. . . ). Oh, and times tables; I recall learning those to 12 in second grade. A kid in school played accordion for an assembly once, too. That was cool.
Another school: Third grade was a wash, but I got glasses, so it was a pretty clean wash.
Fourth grade? Learned a box step and a bunch of songs. Class had a pretty good classroom library. Oh, and the teacher was kinda loony, but most of that may have been due to her failure t grasp “new math” #gagamaggot. (But I still recall some of her loony rambles, like how she always turned her car off at a red light to save gas. I thought that was really amusing). F
Another school: Fifth ad sixth grades were. . . *meh* 5th: all I really recall is that the classroom was on the second floor, west side of the building, and that we ALL had to get Valentines cards for everyone in the class. Dumb.
6th: FINALY A REPREIVE! Got to spend a lot of time in “independent study” thanks to our neighbor running OFF THE ROAD and hitting me. Yay! Hospital, surgeries, and more. Kept me out of school and MUCH less bored for quite some time. Sweet!
Grade school was a bigger waste of time than junior high and high school, but that doesn’t say much for JH and HS. . .
At least I had libraries and extracurricular activities during grade school (even if it was just playing “500” in the street or riding my bike around or building silly things in the back yard or whatnot).
CMS Apocalypse?
Premise of a fiction series.
FORTUNATELY, I read the author’s intro before committing to the series that might have had potential for having some interesting information gleaned through some storytelling. But, given one sentence early on, I was able to avoid further brain-damaging text. Whoever edited the book missed a gross mismatch between a plural noun and a singular pronoun. A further glance down the page and, yep: grammar being sucked like dead bunnies through a straw. I ain’t got time fer that. 😉
I’ll add to my infopack on CMSes and EMPs with info from elsewhere, TYVM.
Olde Pharte Memories. . .
Darned near everything I see nowadays reminds me of vignettes of the past, oftentimes many different memories of things related to the current scene. Just a couple of minutes ago, someone mentioned Punnett Squares and reminded me that, though we covered their use in 7th Grade Science class, they were missing from my sophomore high school biology class. . . in a different state and district (as was a LOT of the human anatomy covered in an 8th Grade Science class in that other district).
Yeh, when we moved (9th Grade), the schools placed me in “average kids'” classes, in order to make absolutely sure I was bored out of my gourd.
Semi-Good News
There are kids’ writers who have some pretty decent books out, still. Surprising? IKR? *heh*
I recently read the first two books in a juvie (“YA”-ish) semi-hard sci-fi and feel I can recommend them for my Wonder Woman’s libraries (though they’re only available in ebook and paperback *sigh* Both formats have school library problems). They’re about the level of the Tom Swift, Jr. sci-fi in terms of actual hard science, IOW, more hand-waving than _actual_ science, and the kind of fudging of science foundations that had me sometimes rolling my eyes in 4th grade, but still better written and with a much more “civilized” world view than many YA books nowadays. (Yes, I still submitted word usage errors for correction, but not as many as I have come to expect in even tradpub books nowadays.)
The series begins with Awakening by Randal Sloan.
Six books in the series, but I think 2 will do it for me. As with most juvies, the plots and characters are just too predictable – a net positive for YA/juvie books, IMO, but less so for most adult readers.
Another series I am even more sold on is the City Spies series by James Ponti. Yes, the characters and plots are pretty standard (with some interesting variations), but the books are just so very well-written (and pretty darned well edited!) that the first chapter of book 1 (read at a school librarians conference) sold me on the series. And yes, my Wonder Woman reports that her students are rightly as appreciative of the books as I am. 🙂
Memory Hole?
Intercollegiate Studies Institute performed an annual “Civics Literacy” survey for six or seven years in a row, tracking trends in the general population with isolation of various demographics. While all demographics showed levels of civics literacy that would not be able to pass the dumbed down quiz prospective naturalized citizens are required to take, two things stood out to me:
1. High School seniors consistently out-performed college seniors, and
2. The lowest scoring demographic was. . . elected officials.