Twenty years ago, I began imagining a story about three disabled teenage girls who discover they possess elemental powers. The idea stayed with me, growing and changing as I grew and changed, waiting for the right moment to be told. That moment has arrived. The EleMenTs Series is complete, and all three novels are now available.
Continue reading → The EleMenTs Series Is Complete: A Young Adult Fantasy Trilogy
Hey, there! Welp, it’s that time of the year again — yes, time for us to ask for the indulgence of your continued, kind, support for this blog by buying our eBook — Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 16 (2025) — to show your support so we may continue to publish this blog without advertising while still being able to cover our yearly, ongoing, online publication costs that include server space, hosting fees, and bandwidth payments. Yes, we live in a money world — even for free reading!
Continue reading → Hey Now! Best of David Boles, Blogs: Vol. 16 (2025): Buy Now!
At first glance, the analytic philosophy of Saul Kripke, the dramatic poetry of Seamus Heaney, and the political statecraft of Queen Elizabeth I could not seem more disparate. What could a 20th-century logician, a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, and a 16th-century monarch possibly share? Yet, beneath the surface, each grappled with language, identity, and authority in redemptive ways. Each, in their own silo, understood that naming and narrative wield power – whether it’s designating a possible world in logic, naming the unnameable traumas of Irish history, or styling oneself “Virgin Queen” to command a realm. In this exploratory conversation, we’ll sink into Kripke’s revolutionary ideas about reference and necessity, examine Heaney’s dramatic explorations of history and identity, and uncover how Elizabeth I engineered her political identity through language. We’ll reveal subtle connections – the resonances in their treatment of naming, authority, and the notion of necessity – to see how each shaped their world and left a lasting impact on the future. The journey is a thoughtful occupation: part historical detective work, part philosophical reflection, as we uncover lessons and methods from this unlikely trio.
Grade inflation is a major problem on college campuses, and it is the sworn duty of the faculty to carefully and cautiously grade all student work the same. Students tend to expect an “A” grade just for showing up to class when, in structured reality, a “C” grade is what a student earns for merely meeting the minimum requirements for any course. A “C” is a fine grade — but a lot of students seem to feel a “C” grade is the same as an “F” grade when it is not. A “C” defines the middling ground for a course and that is the honest grade most students earn, even though faculty tend to inflate grading the middle just to keep the peace.
There is a new assault on literature and it comes as a direct result of the garbage that passes itself off as a book series called Fifty Shades of Grey. After tremendous sales of the book series, adult fiction publishers are looking at the classic literature of the past for their way to big profits in the future. Rather than writing fully new works of fiction, the publisher will take existing classic novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and insert numerous sex scenes where the original author had none.
I fully understand that the expression “Sex sells!” has much validity especially in a world where people can click a link on their smart phones and get a dose of Wuthering Heights with sex scenes added in seconds — but just because you can do it does not mean that you should. In this case I think that the classic works of literature should be left undisturbed, so that people can read them as they were written.
Continue reading → Assault on Literature through 50 Shades of Yuck
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