Harlem: The Journey Uptown The February 1, 2023, daily newsletter from The New Yorker describes this article from 1981 as follows: Few neighborhoods in New York City—indeed, few neighborhoods anywhere—are as closely linked with a community as Harlem is with African Americans. In literature and music, fashion and film, the area has become synonymous with […]
Florida teachers told to remove books from classroom libraries or risk felony prosecution I’ve tried to hold back on the censorship news recently because, if I’m not careful, I’ll just burst into tears. But with this news story, we seem to have reached a whole new level. Category: Censorship How Edgar Allan Poe became the
Prince Harry’s Book Is Just Good Literature “I don’t give a fig about the royals, but much of Spare reads like a good novel.” After admitting that she doesn’t care about the British royal family and doesn’t follow what they’re doing, Laura Miller writes, “To my surprise, the first half of Spare turns out to
You Can Watch ‘Kaleidoscope’ Episodes in Any Order. A Complete Guide I love novels with unusual structures. So when I read that the episodes of Netflix’s new drama Kaleidoscope could be viewed in any order, I had to check it out. This article from CNET discusses how several choices can affect the way viewers experience the
Authors Who Write Outstanding Mystery Series and Stellar Standalones One question that comes up periodically on book blogs is this: Do you prefer to read series or standalone novels? But this article by novelist Alicia Beckman reminded me that there’s also another side to this question: Do authors prefer to write series or standalone books?
Happy New Year! Welcome to the first blog post of the year! NaJoWriMo Journal Writing Challenge Starts January 1st I know a lot of book bloggers are also writers. Many participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, every November. Since I don’t write fiction, I’ve always been a little jealous. But, if you write in
The dawn of AI has come, and its implications for education couldn’t be more significant The anxiety and questions about AI-generated writing continue: “t’s safe to say we can expect some challenging years ahead.” Vitomir Kovanovic, Senior Lecturer in Learning Analytics at the University of South Australia, speculates. Category: Writing Women Talking Embraces the Drama
A (hopefully premature) obituary for Bookforum and the magazines that connect us David L. Ulin laments the closing of Bookforum, a review journal “positioned in the middle territory between service journalism and the academy”: To engage with an issue has long felt to me like going to a fabulous party where the guests are not
We Need Diverse Books Launches #BooksSaveLives Initiative Against Censorship We Need Diverse Books, an organization formed in 2014 “to advocate for diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry,” has launched its #BooksSaveLives initiative with “as much as $10,000 in grants to schools and libraries in underserved communities so they can purchase challenged and banned books
Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift’s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Plath Elizabeth Scala, professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, explains how and why she created the course “The Taylor Swift Songbook,” an introductory English course. Categories: Literary Criticism, Literary History, Reading Why read old books?
