Emma Burns 11/17/24 Emma Burns 11/17/24

23 Code Name Verity and Lies

Emma Burns 11/10/24 Emma Burns 11/10/24

Hammerfall and a bigger world

Emma Burns 10/29/24 Emma Burns 10/29/24

21 Character Arc and Fangirl

Emma Burns 10/20/24 Emma Burns 10/20/24

20 Outsiders

Emma Burns 10/13/24 Emma Burns 10/13/24

19 Poker Face

Emma Burns 10/9/24 Emma Burns 10/9/24

18 Story Engine and Wonderfalls

Emma Burns 9/30/24 Emma Burns 9/30/24

17 How to read classics and The Iliad Book I

A student asked how to read the classics, so here's a detailed approach, followed by a brief discussion of Book I of The Iliad, just to get a taste of how we might do such a thing. Read those things that daunt you! They're all yours!

Emma Burns 9/23/24 Emma Burns 9/23/24

16 Objects in Space

Emma Burns 9/9/24 Emma Burns 9/9/24

15 Treating People Like Things

Emma Burns 8/22/24 Emma Burns 8/22/24

14 Conjunctions, Consequences, and Murderbot

Emma Burns 8/8/24 Emma Burns 8/8/24

13 Character and Finn

Emma Burns 8/1/24 Emma Burns 8/1/24

12 Roald Dahl’s Boy and Autobiography

Emma Burns 7/12/24 Emma Burns 7/12/24

11 Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future

Emma Burns 7/2/24 Emma Burns 7/2/24

10 Matilda

Emma Burns 6/26/24 Emma Burns 6/26/24

9 Leverage, Competence, Commentaries

Emma Burns 6/20/24 Emma Burns 6/20/24

8 Good Girl, Sad Boy

Emma Burns 6/18/24 Emma Burns 6/18/24

7 Dual Storylines, Past and Present

Emma Burns 6/17/24 Emma Burns 6/17/24

6 Andor

Emma Burns 6/17/24 Emma Burns 6/17/24

5 The Idiot Plot

Emma Burns 6/17/24 Emma Burns 6/17/24

4 The Last Flight of Dr. Ain

Welcome to the Sacred Cheese of Life podcast.

The music at the beginning and end of each episode is from “Dark Daze” by Shaolin Dub, under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Please visit Shaolin Dub at the Free Music Archive.

You may know “sacred cheese of life” from the short story “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane. That’s a link to it. It’s bothering me that a short story title is underlined, though. That’s how you know I grade student work way too much.

What on earth did his narrator mean by this? Well, that’s open to interpretation. Maybe it’s about that thing we’re all striving for. Maybe it’s about happiness or our dreams and goals. Maybe it’s about a big lie we’re all sold, the cheese in the trap that snaps shut and kills us once we reach it. I hope it’s not really that last one, but we all get to decide for ourselves.

I write novels about people who are stuck in their lives and need to get unstuck.

I teach literature to college students who often aren’t sure where they’re going or why.

In Sacred Cheese of Life, I study a text a week and then try to apply what I’ve learned to whatever I’m writing. Want me to read or watch something? Send it my way.

I’m always chasing the sacred cheese of life in one way or another. I think we all are. And when we forget to do that, very bad things ensue.

Sometimes I imagine it as a red waxed Babybel Gouda floating in the sky with a nimbus around it. Angels are singing in the background. Ahhhhhh!

Sometimes, on the less good days, I’m right back there in “The Open Boat” with the correspondent, the cook, the captain, and the oiler, rowing and bailing and struggling and starving, always able to see the shoreline but never getting any closer to it. Surely this can’t be all there is, says the correspondent. I agree!

Literature of all kinds (including film and television and graphic novels and songs) is one of the best routes I know to the sacred cheese of life. The more I read and watch and listen, the better life gets. And when I can get there in my own writing? Absolute heaven.

Come on along.

Sacred cheese of life!