Ask ten readers what a book is and you will get ten metaphors and no definitions. A mirror, they say, or a door, or a passageway with footfalls behind it. The metaphors flatter the reader and obscure the object. None of them tell you what is sitting on your shelf, dark and patient, while you sleep. Here is the answer. A book is stored sun.
On March 17, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce passed H.R. 7661, a bill that would strip federal education funding from any public school whose libraries contain “sexually oriented material.” The bill’s formal title is the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” and it was introduced by Representative Mary Miller of Illinois on February 24, 2026, days after the State of the Union address. Eighteen Republican cosponsors signed on. No Democratic members supported the bill. The legislation now awaits a vote on the full House floor.
Continue reading → The Canon for Sale: How Congress Handed Literature to a Homeschool Company
I have been thinking about mirrors for forty-eight years. The thinking started in a dressing room at a community playhouse in Lincoln, Nebraska, where a row of mirrors lined the wall above a counter cluttered with spirit gum and cold cream and the residue of faces that had been built and removed hundreds of times. I was thirteen years old and I was watching an actor apply a prosthetic nose, and the thing that struck me was the moment when his own face disappeared under the new architecture. His eyes changed. The man in the mirror stopped being the person I had been talking to thirty seconds earlier and became someone whose bone structure carried a different social signal, a different set of expectations, a different gravitational field. Same eyes. Different face. Different world.
Continue reading → The Borrowed Saint: The Book That Watched Me Back
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
Let me start out by being completely honest — I simply do not understand why the novel Fifty Shades of Grey and its two sequels are so incredibly popular and sell so well. To a certain extent this is understandable. As the saying goes, sex sells. Does it really sell so well in, say, Barnes and Noble for example? I am sure that it does, although it apparently is no longer done behind curtains and in shaded bags exclusively. When you go to a bookstore and head over to the magazine section, you will notice that all of the magazines that feature pornographic images are in shaded bags.
I’m not anticipating anything earthshattering to be released or to happen in the next fifteen days and so I present to you my favorites of 2006 a good two weeks earlier than it has been traditionally released.
Music
A lot of albums were released during the year but not a lot of them caught my attention, and many of those that did somehow didn’t manage to keep it for all that long. I have two albums in mind for this year – the eponymous Pearl Jam release and the soundtrack to the Disney film High School Musical.
Pearl Jam’s eponymous album was a nice return to a strong rocking band. It takes its place among some of my favorite albums ever. From the moment you open up the avocado emblazened album and put it in to the last moments of the last song you realize what a good thing you have. I was particularly pleased with the fact that for a limited time Pearl Jam basically gave away the mp3 of the first single off of the album, “World Wide Suicide.” I was unable to see them when they were playing at The Gorge in George, Washington (yes, very funny) but I know that the next time they are around I will certainly make a good effort to see them. The album as a whole is a no-punches held back crticism of the current government in power in the United States and the directions that we have taken in foreign policy. I think you could say that the band doesn’t particularly agree with the direction being taken.
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