Thanks to these two bloggers for sponsoring the 2020 Blog Discussion Challenge: Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction Shannon at It Starts at Midnight You can join the discussion challenge at any time during 2020 by clicking on either link above. Which is more important in fiction: plot or character? Novels that engage in complex […]
The Interplay of Plot and Character in Fiction Read More »
The Subjective Mood Adam O’Fallon Price describes Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie like this: “The novel does not settle for merely telling a story and telling it well; it also on some level considers that story and frames it, in doing so giving the narrative a greater dimensionality, what we might
The Million Basic Plots Novelist and screenwriter Ned Beauman laments the existence of the website TV Tropes, which breaks down the plots of all forms of popular-culture storytelling into such minute parts as to prevent him from coming up with any original plot elements. I don’t write fiction but I love reading it, and I
Looking for a Book to Read With Friends? The New York Times introduces Group Text, “a monthly column for readers and book clubs about the novels, memoirs and short-story collections that make you want to talk, ask questions, and dwell in another world for a little bit longer.” The focus for book clubs will be
Thanks to these two bloggers for sponsoring the 2020 Blog Discussion Challenge: Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction Shannon at It Starts at Midnight You can join the discussion challenge at any time during 2020 by clicking on either link above. As a subgenre of the mystery or detective-fiction genre, the locked-room mystery, which originated
Is the Locked-Room Mystery Obsolete? Read More »
Why I’ll Never Read a Book a Week Ever Again Calling herself a slow reader, writer Hurley Winkler describes her 2019 experience of “the 52 books in 52 weeks reading challenge” she found on the literary blogosphere. During the year she finished several books she “wasn’t wild about” simply because she’d already invested time in
What to read in 2020 based on the books you loved in 2019 If you liked any of the 12 books listed here, Angela Haupt has suggestions about what you might like to read this year. The 12 books from 2019 that she references are: “City of Girls,” by Elizabeth Gilbert “All This Could Be
CANDID PORTRAITS OR GHOSTWRITTEN FLUFF: THE HISTORY OF THE CELEBRITY BOOK Jeffrey Davies looks at the history of the celebrity book, whether it be “a memoir, an essay collection, a cookbook, a book of poetry, or a self-help book.” He discusses the rise of the ghostwriter, what happens when celebrity culture and science clash (for
The Suspect by Fiona Barton Barton, Fiona. The Suspect Penguin Audio, 2019 Narrated by Susan Duerden, Fiona Hardingham, Nicholas Guy Smith, Katharine Lee McEwan ISBN 9781524779962 When two British girls spending their gap year in Thailand disappear, journalist Kate Waters senses a possible big story. Always looking for the latest big scoop,
The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy Melissa Ashley finds the origin of fairytales to “a coterie of 17th century French female writers known as the conteuses, or storytellers.” Fairytales “crystallised as a genre” in this time when women, sometimes as young as 15, were married off—often to
