Artemis Fowl and the importance of non-violence in children’s literature

I read the first Artemis Fowl book in January, and just finished Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception, the 4th book. One thing that struck me apart from the general genius of these books was the emphasis on the fairies’ nonviolence, even for the very clear ‘bad guys’. This is a discussion about nonviolence in children’s/MG literature. 

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‘Tis the Season of Rereading Strange The Dreamer

Welcome back to ‘Tis the Season of Rereading, people! I’m back where it all began (at least, this series) in India with wintry air and slow internt and a lot of gladness. It’s approprading and reviewing one of my favourite books of this year–Strange the Dreamer, and its sequel, Muse of Nightmares.

‘Tis The Season of Rereading: The Austin Chronicles

Hi Virtually Readers! It is December which is half YAY ADVENT JESUS FAMILY FOOD SUMMER and half OH NO THE YEAR IS ALMOST DONE. But whether feelings of coziness drive you towards books or feelings of panic drive you towards books, our annual feature ‘Tis the Season of Rereading is back for its fifth (!) year. Way back in 2014, Shar and I decided that we really like rereading books in our holidays and wintertime, and ever since then we’ve had this recurring seasonal feature on Virtually Read. It is fun! As always, there is an open invitation to join in if you would also like to reread a book, write about it and link back to us, but no pressure. Anyway I have some gooood stuff lined up for this but the first one is rereading the Austin Chronicles.

LitCrawl Recap!

I went to a literature festival a few weeks ago, and I thought that it would be fun to do a whole recap on Virtually Read! This was the first proper book festival I’ve been to—at school we used to have a writing and mountain festival which was cool but a bit random, and I’ve obviously gone to some bookish events, but this was a proper festival. I was going to do lots of things anyway, but then I won some competition on their facebook page and got four tickets to the paid events which was cool. It was sort of at a terrible time (the weekend before I had two exams) but I was pretty over studying at that point anyway, so it was okay.

Emily St John Mandel, and Swirling Complexity

I love it when a book that you’re forced to read becomes fun. And then you like that book so much that you read some of the author’s other books. This happened to me with Station Eleven, by Emily St. John. I had to read for class. I would call it dystopia, but we learned about it as science fiction, which I guess is fair enough. It’s a very clever book, and quite a lovely one, considering how it write about unspeakably horrible events.

Thoughts on Blogging with Shar and Shanti

A where we’re at post, a why we’ve been absent post, an honest and confused post. Lots of information you probably will have guessed, but we’re trying to be honest on this platform, this mini-soapbox.

Thoughts on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

Hey Virtually Readers! Shanti and I recently watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before separately. I thought it might be fun to do a co-discussion with what we thought about it. I’m italics, Shanti is bold, let’s go! 

Thoughts on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Hey Virtually Readers! I just finished a fairly famous science fiction book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? . It’s by Phillip K. Dick, and very much a part of the sci-fi canon. I can see a lot of the ways it influenced YA dystopia that I really like. Anyway, here is a post with some of my thoughts about it.

Our Fourth Blogoversary!

It’s our blogoversary! Shar and I have been writing about books for 4 years on this little site, and we’ve changed a lot over that time, and hopefully gotten better at writing. We’re going to sort of interview each other about it to celebrate, because writing posts together is fun. This is definitely something to celebrate, and we’re so glad to be here to do it!

On science, reading, and why I’ve been getting into more nonfiction of late

^^^ I hope this post lives up to its title hahaha I titled if before I started writing. As you may know, I’m a science student. Most of the book bloggers I know that have been/are at university are doing arts. This post is about why science people often disregard reading (fiction) and why I think this is silly.