Please Note: Schedules are to be considered tentative and subject to change. This week we are exploring Russia and the Baltic, and we will return to the Middle East once we find our lost camels and get our expedition back together again. Russia is the largest and one of the most misunderstood countries in the […]
Our guest this week is none other than YA Fantasy author Donna Jo Napoli. Napoli is best known for her stunning retellings of classic stories such as Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. She has set her stories in countries from Persia to Ireland, from Italy to Germany. She is a professor of linguistics, […]
Welcome to the first week of East of the Sun! This week we are exploring the Far East. Countries included in the Far East include China, India, Mongolia, Nepal, Japan, and Korea. These countries are vastly different from each other, and even within a single country, multiple cultures co-exist. China is especially rich in cultural […]
Welcome to the first ever Pandora Society Summer Reading Program! The goal is to travel the world, learn about different cultures, read lots of books, and win prizes. Yes, you heard correctly, prizes. What is East of the Sun? “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” is one of the world’s oldest fairytales, most […]
Wednesday May 25th was Towel Day. What is Towel Day, you ask? It is a day when fans of a strange comedic SF writer named Douglas Adams carry a towel around in order to identify other initiates into an even stranger fandom known colloquially as HG2G. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a different […]
Beasts of Tabat is not a simple tale of good versus evil. This is a tale of shades of grey—of multiple perspectives—of overlapping areas of right and wrong. Cat Rambo has created a society where you cannot characterize anyone simply based on whether they are human, shifter, beast, or something else entirely. You have to judge the characters by their actions and motivations. It is easy to sympathize with some of the morally ambiguous characters in one chapter, only to be repulsed by their actions in the next.
Last week I read The Raven King, the final book in the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. But, as she has pointed out on Twitter, she does not hold a monopoly on welsh mythology, and the Raven King can be found elsewhere in culture, media, and literature. It can be found most notably in the […]
Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told that she would kill her true love. Thus begin The Raven Boys, the first book in the epic Raven Cycle by YA author Maggie Stiefvater. It is an unapologetic blend of myth and magic, fantasy and reality, friendship, true love, and school exams. There are […]
