Fiction

bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Life Stories: The Personal Component

Related Posts: Introduction to Life Stories “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember Review of The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen We all carry around a life story that expresses who we are and that contains our sense of identity. Introduction to Life Stories discusses how cultural influences such […]

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Monday Miscellany

Tragic fiction may leave you emotionally upset It might seem logical that reading a sad fictional story would be less upsetting than reading a less sad but true story. But new research suggests this is not the case: “Consumers may choose to read a tragic fictional story because they assume that knowing it was fictional

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Monday Miscellany

Required Reading: 10 Books We Read For Class That Will Change Your Life As summer winds down, many students turn with desperation to those lists of required summer reading that they put aside a couple of months ago. But not all assigned reading is dull and unfulfilling, the editors at Huffington Post say: Sometimes reading

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Before I Go to Sleep”: The Film

Before I Go To Sleep: Exclusive film stills show Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth in new psychological thriller Related Posts: Introduction to Life Stories “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember These emotive images depict Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman as a woman who wakes up every morning remembering nothing in the

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Novelist Lev Grossman on Narrative

Lev Grossman: My depression helped inspire the Magicians trilogy – Salon.com. I think literary critics — of whom you’re one and I’m another — are much better at describing beauty on the sentence level than we are at talking about the grace of a narrative twist or wonderful pacing or the thrilling tension that a

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember

  Related Post: Introduction to Life Stories   Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel by S. J. Watson HarperCollins, 2011 Kindle Edition A woman awakens, wonders where she is, rolls over—and is shocked to see a middle-aged man wearing a wedding ring and with hairs on his back sleeping next to her. She stumbles

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woman reading

A Dozen Mysteries and Thrillers That Blew Me Away

Although we tend to think of mysteries and thrillers together, there is a difference: In a mystery, the reader sees the clues and, near the end, discovers the culprit along with the fictional detective. In a thriller, the reader learns early on who the villain is and watches as the hero and the villain try

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Monday Miscellany

A New Book About To Kill a Mockingbird Author Harper Lee? Last week saw the announcement of a new book about Harper Lee, The Mockingbird Next Door by Chicago Tribune reporter Marja Mills. USA Today explains how Mills obtained material about the notoriously reclusive and publicity-shy Lee: Mills was able to penetrate Lee’s wariness by

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Must We Like Fictional Characters?

  During a recent book group discussion of John Updike’s novel Rabbit, Run, someone said, “I don’t particularly like any of the characters in this book.” I had to admit that I agreed with this assessment, but that truth doesn’t affect my appreciation of the book. This seemingly casual reference to not liking fictional characters

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Monday Miscellany

THE STARS OF THESE YOUNG ADULT BOOKS SWEAR, STRUGGLE, AND GENERALLY ACT LIKE REAL TEENS In the new novel Aspen by Rebekah Crane, the teenage title character is an awkward, artsy kid who gets into a car accident that kills the most popular girl at school. The book traces the bizarre fallout in her Boulder,

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