I was excited to read that CBS is bringing to life yet another Star Trek series. When I stopped in at Twitter, I was surprised to see that lots of other people were excited about it, too. My husband and I were avid fans of the original series Star Trek. We watched the reruns so […]
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Think “The Exorcist” Was Just a Horror Movie? The Author Says You’re Wrong. Here’s an outstanding piece of creative nonfiction about William Peter Blatty, author of the 1971 bestseller The Exorcist, made into a blockbuster movie that remains on most lists of quintessential horror movies. I remember hearing back when the book came out that
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Out with vampires, in with haunted houses: the ghost story is back Just in time for Halloween (or shortly thereafter), here are several new ghost stories: It has been supplanted in recent years by vampires, witches and other monsters, but now the good old-fashioned ghost story is back with a bang, with everyone from debut
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Sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson says it’s getting harder and harder to predict the future Neal Stephenson is one of the biggest names in science fiction writing. Here, Drake Baer admits that he was “stoked” to talk to Stephenson and ask him, “What do you think is going to happen to human society in the near
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10 Famous Authors’ Favorite TV Shows In an era when it’s impossible to open a web browser without stumbling across another “Is television the new novel?” piece, we couldn’t help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style, just what our favorite writers watch in their spare time. See what shows the following authors like: Zadie Smith S.E. Hinton
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E. L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction No. 94 Novelist E.L. Doctorow, who died recently, participated in this interview with George Plimpton that was published in the winter 1986 issue of The Paris Review. Here’s a quotation from Doctorow that I particularly like: One of the things I had to learn as a writer was
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The ghostwriter, the secret plot and a ‘grave-robbing’ Stieg Larsson sequel You may remember that Swedish author Stieg Larsson dropped dead shortly after delivering the manuscript of the third novel in what has come to be called his Millennium trilogy. His long-time live-in companion, Eva Gabrielsson, said that his laptop contained a nearly completed manuscript
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I have finished reading Harper Lee’s newly released novel Go Set a Watchman and am collecting my thoughts. I read it slowly, taking copious notes. Probably like most people, I tried to read it in two mutually exclusive ways simultaneously: both with and without To Kill a Mockingbird as a touchstone. Figuring out how to
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As the July 14th publication date of Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, approaches, she is much in the news. Here are a couple of representative articles. Harper Lee Receives Copy of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ as Release Nears Alexandra Alter and Serge F. Kovaleski report in the New York Times on an
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What’s Changed, and What Hasn’t, in the Town That Inspired “To Kill a Mockingbird” In a long piece for Smithsonian Magazine, Paul Theroux describes a visit to Monroeville, AL, home of author Harper Lee and inspiration for the fictional Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird: Monroeville is like many towns of its size in Alabama—indeed
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