Week 2 (11/4-11/8) Choosing Nonfiction: What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the title or cover influence you? If so, share a title […]
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‘Each bears his own ghosts’: How the classics speak to these days of fear, anger and presidential candidates stalking the land You thought Spooky Season ended at midnight on October 31? Here in the U.S., Rachel Hadas, professor of English at Rutgers University, writes, “A week before the election, everyone seems to be afraid.” “Our
The starting point for this month’s 6 Degrees of Separation challenge is Sally Rooney’s latest release, Intermezzo. I keep meaning to read Sally Rooney’s works, but, you know, “so many books, so little time.” So I’m going to begin this exercise with word association first degree Intermezzo immediately reminded me of the title The Mezzanine
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For your Halloween enjoyment, I offer this fascinating article: Witches around the world “The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?” Gregory Forthis, retired professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has spent
Because I have a personal penchant for alliteration, I’ve been reading nonfiction in November for the past few years. Only a couple of months ago did I discover that Nonfiction November is An Actual Thing, an established book-blogging meme: Announcing Nonfiction November I apologize to the hosts for not acknowledging them in past years, and
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Usha Vance Is Reading The Iliad, a Poem About Male Rage. Its Famous Translator Sees Irony. “JD Vance’s wife is reading a more than 800-page book about men fighting to control women’s bodies, waging war, and ‘refusing to accept a loss.’” This article ticks off so many Life Stories in Literature patterns: rewriting history, giving
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Echoes of the Past in Crime Fiction Clinical psychologist and novelist Lucy Burdette understands exactly what I value most about crime fiction: we humans are always affected by our history. Our families shape our stories with their presence or absence, their quirks and patterns, their healthy traits and unhealthy, and sometimes their serious trauma. We
To read or not to read: Does COVID-19 belong in our books? Logan Brown, an arts writer for The Michigan Daily, writes the “ability to escape into another world is an essential requirement for me to like a book — when I am reminded of my own reality that escape is often broken.” She then
Books Aren’t Mental Movies: You’re Missing the Best Part of Reading BookRiot writer Danika Ellis caught my attention with this opening paragraph: Sometimes, when people describe what they love about reading, it feels like we’re doing two very different activities. They talk about a movie playing out in their mind’s eye as they read, imagined
This month’s starting point is Colm Tóibín’s Long Island. Here’s the description from Goodreads: From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.
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