i really love poetry. like genuinely love it. there’s something about the way a few lines can hold so much feeling without explaining everything. i love poems that are reflective and emotional but also just good. not forced or trying to be clever, just honest in a way that stays with you. i love rereading poems and finding new meanings depending on my mood, or getting stuck on a piece trying to figure out the context or message between the lines. poetry feels personal in a way nothing else does. so i’m curious, is anyone else like this. if you love poetry too please tell me. and if you have any recommendations i would love them. reflective, emotional, comforting, devastating, anything that meant something to you. i’m always looking for poems that feel like they understand something i couldn’t put into words.

I've been craving a good scary read but I'm way too indecisive. Give me your worst!

Cosby’s writing is so vivid. I love how action packed this is! I can easily see this being a TV series or movie.

Gay space opera ❤️

Also maybe Ocean's Echo by the same author, another gay space opera but I've not read it yet!

So, my friends' kid brought home a list of the books (and movies?) they'll be studying in English class this term. This is what they have listed:

• Lord of the Flies: William Golding (novel)
• Cast Away: Robert Zemeckis (film)
• Macbeth: Shakespeare (drama)
• The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Ben Stiller (film)
• The Veldt: Ray Bradbury (short story)
• Harrison Bergeron: Kurt Vonnegut (short story)
• Robot Dreams: Isaac Asimov (short story)

If you read this list and thought "wow there's a shocking lack of female writers and even characters!", then we're on the same page. We're all mad about the same thing. I'm pretty sure they're all white Americans too (we're Canadian) 🙄 EDIT: skipped over Shakespeare, he's def not American lol same with William Golding, but British isn't better.

ANYWAYS, as we were raging about the horrible list, I thought of what I would include instead, to up the diversity by about 1000 times.

Here's the new list of most diverse books that I came up with (and this was just scrolling through my recently finished books) I was aiming for diversity plus good discussion points:

• What Moves the Dead + The Fall of the House of Usher: compare and contrast and all that (short novel & short story)
• The Empress of Salt & Fortune: feminist high fantasy short novel and the whole series is great (short novel)
• Open Throat - short story of a queer mountain lion debating if it should eat people or not (that's a VERY brief summary lol) (short novel)
• Long Way Down - an alternate to a play maybe? It's written in verse and about teenage gun violence (novel in verse)
• OR The Girl and the Goddess by Nikita Gill: a book of coming of age poetry exploring Hindu mythology (novel in verse)
• Princess Mononoke: Ghibli is great at writing strong female characters and the added environmentalism is a plus! (film)
• Greta Gerwig's Little Women: I know, this is a typical answer but I still think it's a great movie. (film)

What would you guys switch these out with?