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
7 Books That Show Storytelling Has Consequences London writer Tody Lloyd explains that in is novel Fervor, the protagonist “aims to write and publish an account of her father-in-law’s experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka without his consent.” Despite the fact that no one in her family wants her to do this, she proceeds
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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
You have multiple ‘social identities’ – here’s how to manage them “When it comes to our membership of different social groups, most of us switch between different versions of ourselves multiple times each day,” writes Anna K. Zinn, Ph.D., of the University of Queensland, in Australia. Identity is the key component of Life Stories in
Writing About Yourself Isn’t Inherently Selfish Novelist Tope Folarin examines the work of French novelist Édouard Louis. But first, Folarin quotes from The Good Story, a 2015 book by the Nobel Prize–winning novelist J. M. Coetzee, co-authored with Arabella Kurtz, a clinical psychologist. Folarin calls The Good Story “a searching, erudite treatise about the stories
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25 Books Your High School English Teacher Was Right to Assign Veronica Booth, a lifestyle and culture writer from Boston, MA, explains that “reading important literary works at a young age can shape your perspective of the world, your empathy toward others, and your beliefs.” Her list of books that underscore her point includes The
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
