Just finished reading NK Jemisin's We Became a City and it's sequel and they were so good I immediately started the Fifth Season by her as well. Highly recommended!
Aw, that's really disappointing. I always knew Alice Cooper was a Republican but never really dug into Dee Snider, just assuming he was cool from his time telling the PMRC to go fuck themselves. I guess not.
Two books that I read in high school definitely changed my life: first was Big Sur by Jack Kerouac. There are intentionally misspelled words, almost no punctuation and very little traditional structure to his writing (it's about him having DTs in a cabin on the coast in northern California). I was literally not aware that you could write books and not follow the grammatical rules they teach you in school, I remember showing it to my friends like "Look at this?! Can you believe it?!"
The second book was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, which also has a non traditional structure, is full of potty humor (and I'm not trying to be polite, it's the best way I can put it), is filled with doodles and is just fucking bizarre while also being very readable and funny.
Kids need to learn the rules of how to write, but they also need to be taught that rules are meant to be broken sometimes.
Definitely sharing this with my vegan gamer mother in law.