Against the objectification of books (or, some thoughts on The Discourse). Brittany Allen addresses the tendency of readers who brag about how fast they read and how very many books they read in a given amount of time. (Examples of this trend most often pop up in those end-of-year reading statistics that Goodreads reports.) “Why […]
Discover the Top Edgar® Award-Winning Mysteries of 2024 One of the flagship productions of PBS (public broadcasting in the U.S.) is MASTERPIECE Mystery! It’s therefore not surprising that PBS recommends that we consider adding to our summer reading lists the books that won this year’s Edgar Awards. American Writers Festival Ultimate Reading List Next Sunday,
Between the Book Club and BookTok: Community Reading in Montreal Adam Christopher Hill tells the story of Page Break, a weekly gathering at De Stiil bookstore in Montreal. Page Break is a time when readers come together, give up their phones, and read silently for an hour. This approach to reading differs from most book
The Real Science Behind Dark Matter Will Melt Your Gray Matter The multiverse is a compelling image for Life Stories in Literature because it offers the possibilities of multiple lives. The first novel I remember that used this concept is Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. The novel is now being made into a series for
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What Fiction Writing Shares With Psychotherapy “Emily Howes Considers the Similarities Between Two Therapeutic Practices” I have a curious double professional identity. I am both a novelist and a therapist; both a teller of tales, and a listener to them. I spend my days in my own imagination or settling into the deepest corners of
‘I will defeat Richard Osman!’: Holly Jackson on being Britain’s top selling female crime author Lucy Knight interviews YA novelist Holly Jackson, whose book series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is currently being adapted into a BBC TV series. According to Knight, “Jackson’s books are some of the most recommended among the #BookTok community.”
The Dinner Party That Started the Harlem Renaissance “A century ago, a dinner party in New York set in motion one of the most influential cultural movements of the 20th century.” Staff members of The New York Times have “explored archival material and have reconstructed much of” what happened on March 21, 1924, at a
The Forgotten Women Who Shaped the Roman Empire Kudos to Atlas Obscura for their series She Was There, in which female scholars participate in “writing long-forgotten women back into history.” I find the movement to give voice to marginalized people who have been erased from history one of the most interesting and vital elements within
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“A Nation of Lunatics.” What Oscar Wilde Thought About America “Rob Marland on the Irish Writer’s Grand Tour of the Gilded Age United States” This article caught my eye because I had just finished catching up on the second season of the HBO series The Gilded Age, which includes a trip to the opera by
Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened Rachel Gordan, assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, discloses that Betty Smith herself had a different experience of life in Brooklyn than does the
