How a Twitter war in 2010 helped change the way we talk about women’s writing A look at how the 2010 dust-up between writers Jennifer Weiner and Jonathan Franzen engendered a decade-long pop culture discussion over two basic questions: “What kinds of stories do we consider to be worthy of respect? And to whom do […]
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
Romance Is a Billion-Dollar Literary Industry. So Why Is It Still So Overlooked? Samantha Leach writes in Glamour that romance novels have evolved from the steamy bodice-rippers of the early 1970s to mid 1980s into works that deal meaningfully with “whatever is happening to women or marginalized people.” ON FAILING THE GOODREADS CHALLENGE P.N. Hinton
Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Louise Adams discusses the history of the metaphor of eating as applied to reading. While the historical applications of the metaphor are informative, I’d like to focus on this point: This metaphor, however, hasn’t always seemed so benign. Two hundred years ago, describing someone as
‘Your throat hurts. Your brain hurts’: the secret life of the audiobook star If you think narrating audiobooks is a dream job because all you have to do is sit there and read, you’d be wrong. Way wrong. Read all about the complex matters of matching specific books with appropriate readers, of preparing, and of
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
America’s First Banned Book Really Ticked Off the Plymouth Puritans A portrait of Thomas Morton, an English businessman who came to the New World with the Puritans but didn’t share their religious zeal. Morton “had the audacity to erect a maypole in Massachusetts.” The Rise and Fall of Booth Tarkington “How a candidate for the
In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended Maybe I just read too many crime novels and watch too many cop shows. Or maybe I’m just gruesome by nature. Yet I often think of exactly this problem when I’m reading a novel or watching a show. A medical examiner needs time
Learning to Write Mysteries the Mystic River Way Angie Kim’s recently published debut novel Miracle Creek is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Dennis Lehane’s 2001 book Mystic River is a novel I still remember well even after all these years. Coming across this article, in which Angie Kim explains
SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM LIBRARY TOURISM Jen Sherman declares “public libraries should be a tourist destination the way museums are.” And she knows whereof she speaks: I started doing a PhD about public libraries in 2012, and in the past eight years, I have visited 112 libraries in six different countries (primarily USA and Australia). I
