Coping with an Alien Lifestyle
UNCERTAINTY. ALIEN. COPE. Three words float continuously in Lilith Iyapo’s mind when she awakens in a living alien ship: uncertainty, alien, and cope. She struggles to adjust to her new housemates, the Oankali, who claims to have rescued the “best” humans from earth to preserve humanity after a nuclear world war. You may be wondering,...
More Than Fairy Tales: The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Brilliance of Children’s Literature
C.S. Lewis, the author of the well-loved Chronicles of Narnia, once said that “a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” There are books that we fall in love with during childhood, which, upon returning to, seem almost lifeless compared to the shining stories from...
“It’s Not Just a Dream, it Could be Our Reality”
The little things make a difference in the bigger picture. Global warming and climate change are not new concerns, but why do some of us continue to treat it as if they are topics not worth being proactive about? In Chris Van Allsburg’s Just A Dream (1990), Van Allsburg places the readers in the position of the...
5 Books to Rejuvenate Your Reading List for the Springtime
A few terms synonymous with spring would include sunshine, bloom, allergy season, and here in Vancouver: cherry blossoms. Along with spring also comes the dreaded (for some) task of spring cleaning. So get out those dusters and open the blinds. Perhaps you’ll stumble upon your bookcase as you power down the vacuum, either well loved...
6 TIPS TO BEAT YOUR WRITER’S BLOCK!
We are approaching that time of the term when we scramble to find the perfect words to use for our term papers. It could also be the moment when you’re struggling to find a way to silence the cursor on your screen that continuously taunts you every time it pulses on the blank page. Fret not!...
“Is this your buying China?”: Luxury consumerism and superficiality in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife
Following increased maritime trade and a reliance on foreign goods, the commercial revolution that swept through England in the late sixteenth century resulted in an intensified desire for new and hitherto inaccessible luxury commodities. One such commodity, china porcelain, resulted in a “china fever” that continued well into the eighteenth century, introducing new notions of...
