Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!
On Bad Books, Bad Robots, and Bad Form
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14 Dec 2025 Writing All Our VoicesReader, I've been playing with the approach to my upcoming book, Frictional Reading, and I'm already convinced that the book needs to not only describe the reading attitude I am advocating but to demonstrate it. That is, I need to build some friction into the text and its reading that reveals, too, the frictions of its writing. For instance, I cannot pretend that I am single-minded and single-purposed in my approach: doubts, challenges, new questions and layers, all reveal themselves in the act of thinking and writing. As a composition teacher, I was cajoled and constrained to call on my students to revise and refine, to clarify and craft, all to smooth the communication pathways, that old "conduit metaphor" at work again. But our writing isn't like this, neither our thinking. We need a different metaphor for what we actually do in our acts of meaning-making (and in reading: check!). Pretending that I have a smoothly-written rhetorical answer to all of our reading needs is simply disingenuous, and contradictory to the frictional posture, in any event. And yet, readers of a nonfiction work have come to "expect" that quickly-consumable set of takeaways and listicles. And so I play on that expectation, offering just the narrative (I use this term even for nonfiction these days) they expect, but with a catch: interruptives, sidebars, boxed anecdotes, footnote challenges, marginal commentaries, and the like--not so many as to clutter and confuse the reading, but substantively weighing in to qualify anything resembling too-confident claim or practice. And the scholarly support? To keep that available but out of the path of most readers, an appendix "glossary" of concepts and their authors explaining how they relate, directed through the text. And, more recently, I've heard about the practice of some authors to place (purely supplementary) materials in QR codes. Will play with this idea. One of my favorite thinkers is Kenneth Burke, who suggested that our lives and ideas might be best understood with a dramatistic metaphor. Reading and meaning-making, too, might be thought of as acts of drama. So readers will encounter a fairly expected primary narrative, but will find other voices (and their own) compelled to engage it in frictional challenge. Want to offer some feedback or questions about this approach? Write me! Or you can even join my more "formal" Frictional Reading team of commenters and supporters!
Literary Nomads: Is All Art Political?Who knew that an old silent film like Metropolis could have so rich a political history? (I know: everyone who was a fan before me!) And as I walked listeners through the film and its "rough spots," to answer our art and politics question required we spend time discussing where meaning comes from in a text: the author's intent, the text itself, the context, or the reader. Which approach is good? Yes. But I also offered a richer set of approaches to our discussion of context, and urged listener/readers/teachers to consider the word, not merely as a "with/accompanying/outside of" the text definition, but also as:
Set this way, context is not nearly so chaotic and shapeless as might imagine, but our methods of interrogating it reveal. . . . And finally, I talked about "peach tree" poetry, those seemingly innocent texts that furtively try to remain beyond politics of all kinds, "art for art's sake." And what did we conclude? Well, of course we did. But to demonstrate this entire approach again in summary, we turn next to the YA text The Giver by Lois Lowry to see how cleanly it fits into our discussion of politics and Omelas. And, then, perhaps, whether my little werewolf story does the same! Episodes ahead:
Have a question or comment about what we're talking about? Use that mailbag and let me know!
Calendar: The Days Rush Along toward ReflectionA slurry of holidays, (mostly) about peace and understanding:
Early Book Review:Five Weeks In a Balloon by Jules Verne (1863) Okay, I was a kid, you know? I decided to start reading back through one of my old favorite science/adventure writers, Verne, reading in order of his published work, and I am not overly surprised to find now how narrow and racist are his portrayals of everyone outside of Europe (and a good number inside it). But the science of balloon travel and chemistry of it all is really impressive, and it's easy to see what captivated his audience and my 12-year-old brain. Do I recommend him now? So far, probably only for his historical position in literature and as a curiosity. When I'm done with this mini-literary tour, I'll try to make an annotated list of Verne in terms of what to expect!
The Worst of 2025Well, this year's SteveReads (not me!) has come out and reader/critic Steve Donoghue has offered his Bottom 10, the worst books of the year. Will your favorite be among them? I admit, I have a couple of these on my TBR list (even after his diatribe), but if nothing else the list is an entertaining look at how some folks imbibe their literature. (Okay, I admit that his #1 Worst is on my own Top 10 of want-to-read-as-soon-as-I-can.) Who is here? Well, I'll offer a taste: something by Helen Oyeyemi, another something by Stephen King. And he has a particular disaffinity--okay, vile repulsion--for what he calls "Brutalist Dudebro books." Do I subscribe to the SteveReads Substack? No; well, maybe only for this annual list. Give it a peek.
Balancing a lot of stuff right now in addition to Waywords, but appreciative of your interest and support! Getting you ideas, recs, readings, and podcasts is wonderful time spent. Let me know if there is anything in particular you need, have questions about, or are looking for!
Steve What's Still Ahead?
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Waywords Studio
Want to dig a bit deeper, stretch a bit wider, discover unique insights in your reading? So do I! That's why we literary nomads explore beyond the comfortable beach read. Subscribe for podcasts and video, fiction and poetry, essays and online courses, unexpected freebies, and ways to lever your literacy into activism! For students of all ages, educators of all kinds, and just plain out litterateurs!