Related Posts: Trust by Hernan Diaz © 2022 Date read: 1/31/2023 The four-part structure was initially what drew me to Trust. By the time I got to this novel, I was used to novels divided into sections that presented either various points of view or various time periods. But Trust was different from other novels […]
#12 “Trust” by Hernan Diaz Read More »
How Two Rebel Physicists Changed Quantum Theory Quantum physics has permeated popular culture to the extent that we often see some of its complex concepts used as metaphors to explain life (e.g., the concept of parallel universes in science fiction novels like Dark Matter [2016] and the title of Ellen Gilchrist’s 1989 story collection, Light
Here’s a summary of the book, with a little help from Goodreads: The plot, I admit, is a bit bizarre, but I’m willing to go with a speculative story line that imaginatively examines some aspect of human experience. But this novel disappointed me—not because of what it contains, but because of what it lacks. First,
Review: “The Husbands” by Holly Gramazio Read More »
How the first National Book Awards reflected 1950s America “In the start of a new series reflecting on 75 years of the awards, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about how societies and juries read and recognize literature” The National Book Awards will celebrate its 75th anniversary at this year’s ceremony, on Nov. 20. To mark the
Related Posts: Babel by R.F. Kuang © 2022 Date read: 1/22/2023 Other than Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, I don’t read much fantasy. I picked this book up because its underlying premise is brilliant: bars of silver, when imprinted with pairs of words with similar meanings that demonstrate what is lost
#11 “Babel” by R.F. Kuang Read More »
The Secrets of Suspense “We love churning apprehension in fiction; we hate it in life. But understanding the most fundamental technique of storytelling can teach us something about being alive.” Kathryn Schulz explains the nature of suspense, the process of “making the audience want to know what happens next.” Inside Alice Munro’s Notebooks Benjamin Hedin,
This month’s starting point is a crime novel with difference – Butter by Asako Yuzuki. Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, “The Konkatsu Killer,” Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan. —Goodreads This sounds like
6 Degrees of Separation: From “Butter” to “Babel” Read More »
How Pants Went From Banned to Required in the Roman Empire “Six hundred years in the history of trousers.” One of the most obvious functions of culture is the creation of customs about how people should or should not dress. Here Vittoria Traverso examines how, in ancient Rome, men’s wearing of pants gradually morphed from
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
Related Posts: All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda © 2016 Date read: 4/17/2017 Like Drowning Ruth, this novel demonstrates yet another way narrative structure can work to build suspense and meaning. Here the protagonist must come to terms with an event that happened earlier in her life. The only way she can unravel past
#10 “All the Missing Girls” by Megan Miranda Read More »
Against the objectification of books (or, some thoughts on The Discourse). Brittany Allen addresses the tendency of readers who brag about how fast they read and how very many books they read in a given amount of time. (Examples of this trend most often pop up in those end-of-year reading statistics that Goodreads reports.) “Why
