David Levithan’s YA novel, Every Day, harkens back to the show Quantum Leap. Remember when Scott Bakula would jump to a new person’s body every week, and have to live out their lives until he solved a problem?
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Category Archives: Books
Kirkus Reviews Takes on My Debut Novel
“Spot-on satire or earnest picture of youth in transition?…”
“Coy’s voice is strong and sure; he captures Neil’s voice and tone with specificity and confidence. However, readers’ tolerance for Neil and his impressions of the Nashville scene may strongly depend on whether they see the novel as a satire of the hip, ironic detachment and self-reflexive views of the millennial generation or an earnest attempt to capture their thoughts and hopes in the second decade of the 21st century. Those who see Coy’s work as being meant seriously will likely find the characters vacuous and talkative to a fault, and the thrust of the narrative will be greatly diluted. For those who see a satirical purpose to Coy’s prose, the narrative will likely carry more resonance, and the end result of Sedgwick and Oberlin’s relationship will have a particular melancholy weight, even when seen through the satirical lens.”
“A well-defined social milieu and articulate characters make Coy’s is it/isn’t it novel an interesting, if uncertain, experience.”
–Kirkus Reviews
[Bold emphasis mine]
You can find the full review here
Quotes from a bad Grad School English Textbook
I now present to you samples from a graduate level English textbook, which I’m pretty sure were written by a high schooler:
“George Orwell was not a novelist.”
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An Authentic Derivative—Interview with Indie Musician Garrett Sedgwick
On “Freedom” in Jonathan Franzen’s Novel, Freedom
Jonathan Franzen has said of fiction that if it “isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown” it “isn’t worth writing for anything but money.” The author’s passion we read in his the novel Freedom was hardly an adventure for money. This novel hurts to read. It makes you ache. It makes you depressed. I makes you yearn for the freedom of having finished it.
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Paper Towns and The Idolatry of Imagination: Part 3—The Vessel
“Forever is composed of nows.”-Emily Dickenson
Part 3: The Vessel
[read Part 1: Strings and Part 2: Grass]
Quentin Jacobson had been searching for Margo Roth Spiegelman, but he had yet to go on a journey. Like Whitman, he needed to travel across the country, become exposed, truly listen for Margo. He needed to experience and understand that paper towns existed all over, with paper people living in all of them. “The world is full of people,” he comes to say, “full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently mismanaged.”
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Paper Towns and the Idolatry of Imagination: Part 2—Grass
PART 2: Grass
“You shall no longer take things 2nd or 3rd hand…nor feed on the specters in books.”-Walt Whitman
Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman? Is she a popular elite brat? Is she a culturally hip closet poetry nerd? Is she a deviant runaway? Is she a selfish drama queen? Is she damaged goods? Or is she just a tangled up girl whose strings are broken?
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Paper Towns and the Idolatry of Imagination: Part 1—Strings
“Doing stuff never feels as good as you hope it will feel.”
Part 1: Strings
John Green’s novel, Paper Towns, soon to be a film, can be read as a kind of spiritual parable. With the exception of TFIOS, his three other novels seem to follow a similar formula: Eccentric yet normal teen boy falls for unattainable and eccentric girl because she is such a mystery, and she becomes a puzzle for him to solve as much as a love interest to pursue. Academic references must follow. Were it not for the occasional sexual controversy, Green seems to be begging for his books to be taught in school, pushing aside bulky classics less relevant to teens.
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Doing Delilah [a short story]
[The following short story, “Doing Delilah,” was published by Midwestern Literary Magazine in November 2010, and subsequently in their volume, Bearing North. I must admit I rushed the story to publication before it was truly ready. The beginning needed some work, and you can tell I have never myself seen battle. Some of it is based on accounts I have heard from those who have seen battle. I keep this story as a learning experience. I figured I could share it as one too.]
DOING DELILAH
by Caleb Coy
“Can’t you see, oh, can’t you see,
what that woman— she’s been doing to me?”
-Marshall Tucker
Was a long, hot day, and there was fighting through every minute of it. We had a whole battalion stationed just outside Fallujah to secure the rail yards North of the city. It took about two days, even with help from the Iraqis. The snipers and booby traps were the worst part for us. Heavy infantry poured into the city. Infantry. Infants. Some mother’s baby each guy was. Patrolling in an unarmed jeep and thinking about his own babies. His own infants.
I could talk about it all day. But that’s one of the unwritten rules. You don’t talk about it. You don’t talk about the fighting and you don’t talk about yourself. I could talk about myself anyway. But I’m not. I’m going to do what any good, self-respecting man does when he returns. I’m going to tell stories about someone else. I’m going to talk about Special Officer Martin Caporaso.
But to get to him I have to start with myself. Grew up in Virginia. That’s the funny thing. People always hear about soldiers coming from the armpit of some southern state—that, or Ohio or Indiana. Like it’s the all-American kid from Ohio, Indiana, or some hole-in-the-wall town in Tennessee. That’s where Martin Caporaso was from. Tennessee. Me, I was born in Virginia. It’s no armpit.
Back home I wasn’t much of anything like Martin Caporaso was. I wasn’t a quarterback. I wasn’t on the homecoming court. Didn’t sleep with the Queen and her two friends, start my own indie band, or manage to out-drink every adult in the county. I worked at an arcade and had a girlfriend for two weeks. What did I do for fun? I played lazer tag after work until the glowing vests needed recharging. I didn’t have it born in me to be a soldier, but I thought I would be good at shooting things. Without a thought about college I enlisted, and the next thing I knew the towers fell and we were at war. I had two weeks before going to Fallujah.
Book Review: ‘When the Church Was a Family’ by Joseph Hellerman
I grew up hearing a lot about how the Church is a family, and I’m thankful for that. Sometimes I would hear it described as an institution, and it struck me as funny to hear. For a long time I’ve tried to remind myself that Church is family, but I haven’t been challenged quite like I was when reading Joseph Kellerman’s When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus’ Vision for Authentic Christian Community.
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CALEB COY 