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 Literature and Politics, Good Horror, and Rough Attitudes
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4 Oct 2025 Joining in Some Good FrictionReader, I'm excited and apprehensive! I recently put the announcement out to several of my online circles: I'm starting the early work on a new book, an important one for me, on my approach to reading, what I might better describe as an attitude: Frictional Reading. Yes, you've seen me writing about this concept in the past few newsletters, too. And while I've had a ton of pieces floating around me in the past several years, between Waywords bringing together many of those pieces by just "existing" and my recent discussions with colleagues at the August CEX conference, I've settled on moving forward with it for late 2026, a more comprehensive articulation of what we gain by adopting the critical perspective of friction in our reading, teaching, and learning. And that last part for me is critical: frictional reading is not about what we teach students to do, but what we do together in our engagement with texts of all kinds. It's not a replacement for other reading acts, but a method for seeing them differently. It's not a comprehension strategy but a critical literacy engagement. If you missed my social media posts and would like to participate in any of the stages of creation for this next big project (from brainstorming with me to challenging the approach, and from testing it out to reading ARCs and editing), just let me know! More and more, I feel like this may be a 'centerpiece' for Waywords Studio and future work. I'll have a draft overview shortly, but for now, more in the signup form:
Literary Nomads: For . . . Everyone!Our brief interruption in the Le Guin "Omelas" journey makes room for three quick "intro" episodes, each stand-alones (or listen-togethers?) for general readers, students and, this upcoming week, teachers, and all exploring the various approaches we might take to the most over-read, over-taught, and sadly misread of American literary works, Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken." My thinking was that if I could make something still fresh and interesting about this near-literal parallel for an "Old Chestnut," I'd be in good shape. Check. The Reader episode examines the role of signification in poetry interpretation, and touches both upon an ironic reversal of the final message and a phenomenology of presence and choice. The Student episode reverses the poem in terms of ego, but uses James's "will to believe" both for the speaker's choice and our own when interpreting poetry. (And I couldn't help but riff on the canon and the Spiderverse along the way.) Next week's Teacher episode will offer some ideas on how to translate the podcast episodes to the classroom, including the act of transparent contexts for our teaching, which might produce some . . . less popular approaches to the poem! Do you appreciate the music of Bruce Hornsby, by the way? Give one or all three a listen! After we're done, we're back to Le Guin's ideas with---well, not exactly a vengeance, but more like a mission to examine our own motivations for (in)action. We'll slide up to a key question: is reading just for thinking, or is there a call to change within it? Have a question about what we're talking about? Use that mailbag and I'll put together another Q&A episode when I have a small set to address!
Episodes ahead:
13 Days of Halloween: Decades of HorrorOctober 19 starts a series of film and short story reviews of horror, new ones each day through Oct 31, beginning with the 1890s and finishing in the 2020s! Here are some authors to expect: B. Stoker, M. R. James, Saki, E. F. Benson, A. Christie, R Bradbury, R. Dahl, R. Bloch, Poppy Z Brite, Nancy Etchemendy, and Alyssa Wong And some directors: Georges Méliès, Paul Wegener, Jacques Tourneur, Roman Polanski, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Peter Jackson, Jaume Balagueró, André Øvredal, Jane Schoenbrun I leave it to you to guess the titles! ARENDT OOPS: Ch. 11 - The Totalitarian Movement Got caught up in another project this past week for a Model UN group working on the subject of fast fashion. Scary topic when we witness its millipede arms all over the planet with the waste and speed and lack of traceability of nearly all of it. Just don't trust those clothing donation bins to do anything good for the world. But in the meantime, I missed my Ch 11 addition for Arendt this past week. Apologies! That should drop this Wednesday, and I will endeavor to complete the remainder of the project by early November as promised. In the meantime, if you missed any of the project so far, here is the complete collection of videos and transcripts so far. The upcoming Reading Guide has topped 60 pages (!) and will be available following the final video as pdf.
First video in the series: Join in on the reading! Yes, we're nearing the end, now, but that only means that you can follow my videos and guides at a leisurely pace! Find more here:
In an Age of Quixotes Calendar: Banned Books & Free Speech Serious reading, vital speaking, and recognitions for those whose narratives have been sidelined. (And some good food, too.)
Some Recommendations Early Recommendation from My Reading:The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King (2012) King's 'history' of First Nations people is really part of a lifelong reflection on cultural history, seriously tracing some of Turtle Island's major historical tragedies while also riffing on his own contemporary experiences with Hollywood films, law, food, and whatever crosses his sardonic path. The result is a circuitous and "curious" journey, challenging to the white narrative, but somehow not threatening, which is perhaps as much criticism as it is praise. “Or, if you want the positive but somewhat callous view, you might wish to describe Christianity as the gateway drug to supply-side capitalism.”
"That was heroic and uncomfortably inspirational, wasn’t it? Poignant, even. You can almost hear the trumpets and the violins. And that kind of romance is not what we need. It serves no one, and the cost to maintain it is too high. So, let’s agree that Indians are not special. We’re not … mystical. I’m fine with that."
Land Acknowledgements WarOhio's recent battle over whether Land Acknowledgements at a university are permissible is full of poison, and the entire matter seems determined to convolute an already difficult topic, wrangling diversity reconciliation, the impotency of acknowledgement, censorship and book banning, and freedom of speech into a morass. Here is the Chronicle's take on it. For Waywords, my recent Acknowledgement is a first and minor step into truth and reconciliation, and I am determined to engage this challenge over the long run ahead. "Once the government enforces bans on teaching truthful history, we are entering new authoritarian territory."
On Ohio State's violating a law against supporting controversial issues: "By banning them, Ohio State is not enforcing this law, but violating it."
The newsletter is getting long, and email limits are being pushed with each delivery. Do me a favor: if there is a particular section or kind of update you are most interested in, drop me a note and let me know. That way, I will know as I trim and streamline going forward what to keep! It's a good time to settle in to creating a Winter Book Reading List. Want recommendations? Ask!
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!