ita,

regardless of being right or wrong, can you clarify whether the person thought it was a good idea to enter into this fray in the first place?

shouldn't artists try to put some distance between themselves and reviewers? nothing good can come of it.

I've certainly never seen it turn out well. See: discussion in Music about Amanda Palmer.

The danger of the internet is that it's too easy to have a bad day, read a bad review, and hit send on a comment before you cool off. In the bad old days, you had time to reconsider (or have friends restrain you) before you fired off a letter to the editor or responded to a reader's letter via snail mail.

If ita`s books had a very horny genie in them, that's the War of Powers series by Robert E. Vardeman.

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For some reason, the genie doesn't ring a bell. But the book covers with the giant eagles totally do. Oy. Thanks for the memories.

The poster defending the crazy author said that the reviewer was wrong for reading the wrong version of the book (despite his assertion he didn't) and that the sentences he quoted were just fine, and could be fixed by adding one word.

He is the first person not on Amazon.com say anything remotely nice about the author. IDGI.

That whole kerfuffle ended up on the Atlantic, as well.

I think the only real winner here is the blogger, who probably has a whole bunch of new subscribers.

Anybody want to help with some small details for my book? Any of our English teachers around?

Wren is in her junior year of high school, and in World Lit (no good reason why I chose that, but it's what's in the first book), and I already mentioned in the previous book that they were studying The Stranger. Any ideas about where the class would go from there? It's midterm time now, right before Christmas break, and I'm trying to figure out what might be on the exam.

Amy, my senior year was world lit, ap. And I remember what we were studyin right before winter break--the inferno. Because then the school was set on fire, we got a couple days off, and the teacher called us all to cancel the exam!

Junior year is almost always American Lit, fwiw. In a World Lit class (usually 10th or 12th grade) they often read a lot of British Lit unless they have a specific year devoted to that. If there isn't a Classical/Foundational Lit class, sometimes the classics get lumped in there too.

Classical Lit:
Odyssey/Iliad, Medea, Antigone, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Gilgamesh, Oedipus the King, Beowolf (I lump this in here since it's an early foundational text, despite being British)

Non-Brit World Lit:
Things Fall Apart, Don Quixote, Persepolis, One Hundred Years of Solitude, All Quiet on the Western Front, Cry, The Beloved Country, The Metamorphosis, The Good Earth, The God of Small Things, Candide, Wide Sargasso Sea, House of Spirits

Brit World Lit:
Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Othello (or other tragedy), Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness (often taught in counterpoint to Thing Fall Apart to show colonialism and racism) and many others--I just hit some of the most popular choices for sophomores.

Ooh, meara. You guys pissed off Dante, clearly.

Thank you, Pix! Yeah, I'm seeing that World Lit would have been better as a senior class, but since Cold Kiss is done and I have them as juniors taking it, I'm stuck.

I like The Metamorphosis as a follow-up to The Stranger, so that's a good thing. For theme reasons, maybe I could work in Frankenstein later, too, because both of them work as things I could use symbolically. Thank you again!

Any time!

Just on a side note--that level of reading (Camus/Kafka) is really tough for most 10th/11th graders. Is the character in an Honors or AP class?