‘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 […]
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
Seven Books That Demystify Human Behavior I firmly believe that reading fiction teaches us a lot about being human. Here freelance writer Chelsea Leu suggests books, both fiction and nonfiction, that can increase our understanding of people. Make it awkward! “Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a
When Emily Dickinson Mailed It In “The supposed recluse constantly sent letters to friends, family, and lovers. What do they show us?” Kamran Javadizadeh looks at The Letters of Emily Dickinson, “a new, definitive edition that collects, reorders, and freshly annotates every surviving letter that Dickinson sent (or drafted) to someone else, along with the
Neuromancer: the birth of an SF classic “Author William Gibson and his editor, Malcolm Edwards, recall how a seminal SF work came to publication” Neuromancer came out just as I was seriously making the transition from academic reading to popular reading. I’d read almost no science fiction at the time and was curious to try
Your time is valuable. So if you only have time for one link this weekend, please make it the article about Barack Obama’s reading lists. It’s heart-warming in many ways. Epistolary Novels To Start Reading Epistolary novels can tell a story on an intimate level. Through one or more characters’ written letters, emails, diary entries,
15 Great Psychological Thriller Books To Bend Your Mind Apparently even business-oriented folks like to read novels, especially psychological thrillers. In this article for Forbes, Sughnen Yongo writes that a “good psychological thriller book earns readers’ respect by capturing their attention with high-stakes conflict, unforgettable tension and unpredictable twists,” then offers a list of “15
