The Oxford Book of Footnotes* If you’ve ever waded through a large academic tome wrangling with a sequence of footnotes at the bottom of nearly every page, you’ll appreciate this piece by Bruce McCall in The New Yorker. How Doctors Use Poetry A Harvard medical student describes how he is learning to both treat and […]
ARE WE ALL GASLIGHTERS? How Crime Fiction Helps Us Understand The Part Communities Play in Continuing Abuse The psychological concept of gaslighting takes its name from the film Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman: Gaslighting is a common aspect of abusive relationships, both in fiction and in real life. An abuser uses a variety of methods to
A neuroscientist explains what tech does to the reading brain An interview with UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and the recently released Reader, Come Home, which details “how technology is changing the brain, what we lose when we lose deep attention, and
The History and Future of the Western in 10 Books Part immigrant story, part adventure tale, and part allegory of truth and justice—the Western has been entertaining American readers for nearly two hundred years. Maybe we’re drawn to the setting: a frontier where mountains claw at the sunset and calamity is just around the corner.
Why Doctors Should Read Fiction Students in medical school and nursing traditionally study ethics through the use of case studies, short synopses of situations the students may face later in their careers. This article describes a recent paper from the journal Literature and Medicine that suggests replacing case studies with short stories that present ethical
The theory of mind myth Theory of mind is the psychological term for our belief that other people have emotions, beliefs, intentions, logic, and knowledge that may differ from our own. That we have a folk psychology theory of other minds isn’t surprising. By nature, we are character analysts, behavioural policemen, admirers and haters. We
THE BEST BOOK DATABASE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF Abby Hargreaves talks about Novelist, a database that librarians use to recommend books to patrons. This database, which may be available to you through your local library’s web site, is especially good for finding recommendations on what to read next if you liked a particular book and
Hunter S. Thompson and the Sanity of Writers A short appreciation of writer Hunter S. Thompson, who often claimed to have done much of his writing “half out of his skull,” under the influence of drugs and alcohol. This link is worth clicking just to see the illustrations. THE GENERATION THAT GREW UP ON STEPHEN
I’ve come across lots of interesting stuff lately. When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life I’m including this article on all my blogs this week because it’s important that everyone with any online presence, no matter how small, read it. 50 MUST-READ CONTEMPORARY ESSAY COLLECTIONS From Book Riot’s Liberty Hardy: To prove that there
What I’ve been reading around the web recently. Can Reading Make You Happier? An interesting history of bibliotherapy, or the use of reading to help “people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.” For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading
