Welcome to Bendable Light (Where David Rodeback Writes). If you want writing on a particular topic, the home page is a good place to start. If you simply want whatever’s new (or nearly new), regardless of topic, this blog view is the place.
- This Writer and That Marching Band
I defy any cynic, any outright pessimist, to come away from that many hours with the youth of the American Fork High School Marching Band without feeling hope, without thinking the future might be in good hands after all. - The Lusty Month of May (Bookish Version)
We’ll chat here with two Utah romance authors. I’ll note some believable and unbelievable statistics I found. And we’ll visit a romance bookstore in Lehi to ask, of all things, do men read romance? Should they? Why? We’ll finish with a line from Shakespeare. - We Also Read to Heal
If we’re not taught to loathe reading from an early age, we soon find many reasons to read, including learning and enjoyment. . . . We also read to heal. - For Holy Week: Mostly MusicMusic, mostly, for each day of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday.
- Bookstore Memories
I like to listen to people in bookstores. I’ve overheard one sort of conversation many times, especially at used bookstores. The child in it can be a first-grader or a teen, and it goes about the same. - Reading Aloud Is for Adults Too
The benefits of reading aloud for youth and adults get far less attention, but they’re real. I don’t mean just reading a witty or scandalous social media post or a short excerpt of an article. I mean reading entire essays, stories, even books aloud. - In Which I Read My Fiction Aloud for World Read Aloud Day 2025
Today is World Read Aloud Day — or WRAD, because the world needs more acronyms. In celebration, I read some of my fiction aloud, so you can listen. - Poke the Algorithms in the Eye: Read Books in 2025
When we roam a real bookstore or browse the library stacks, we brush against the larger world and its infinite realities. The algorithms would never think to offer all the perspectives which beckon there, all the voices of the living and the dead, waiting and wanting to go home with us. - Abolishing Christmas (a short story)
Vern intoned ponderously, “We are on the verge of a very bad headline nationwide, perhaps worldwide. It will read something like this: ‘Utah city council abolishes Christmas.’” - “Sacrifice the Sacrifice of Thanksgiving”
Thoughts on a phrase from Psalm 107: “sacrifice the sacrifice of Thanksgiving.” What might my sacrifice be? - Writing What I Believe, Writing What I Love (Part 3)
The writerly thrills I chase are quotidian. It’s fine with me if others fill their books with the magic of wizards, castles, and all things speculative and paranormal. For my part, I want to tease the magic – and light and darkness – out of ordinary moments. - Writing What I Believe, Writing What I Love (Part 2)
This may sound shallow or Pollyannish. But lately I am drawn more to questions of how we live together in families, neighborhoods, and communities – including religious communities – and less to similar queries on a larger scale. We navigate these things throughout our lives, but with special intensity during adolescence, so perhaps it makes sense to write of youth. - Writing What I Believe, Writing What I Love
I want to enjoy a novel in all the usual ways – laughing, savoring the building suspense, shedding the occasional manly tear. But I especially want to think. I want to think new thoughts and test and rearrange old ones. I want to see and understand the world, myself, and other people in new and unexpected ways. I want to finish the book with a sense that there are still things for me to learn from it, by pondering it or even reading it again. I want a book with a heart and a mind. - He Was Something: A Tribute
I went to a man’s funeral this week. He died shortly after his 94th birthday. Was he a man-out-of time? Are we a time out of men? - My New Year’s Bookbuying Resolution — Join Me!
A new Barnes and Noble bookstore coming to American Fork prompts a bookbuying resolution for the new year.
From the Author
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And if you’re interested in my published fiction, which mostly isn’t about politics, check out my two published collections at 60 East Press.
