Who’s Really Writing Celebrity Novels? “The writers and agents working behind the scenes tell us how it actually works.” “. . . what does it mean when a celebrity decides to write fiction?” Sophie Vershbow interviewed some “ writers and agents working behind the scenes on similar books [to] tell us how it actually works.” […]
‘Each bears his own ghosts’: How the classics speak to these days of fear, anger and presidential candidates stalking the land You thought Spooky Season ended at midnight on October 31? Here in the U.S., Rachel Hadas, professor of English at Rutgers University, writes, “A week before the election, everyone seems to be afraid.” “Our
Usha Vance Is Reading The Iliad, a Poem About Male Rage. Its Famous Translator Sees Irony. “JD Vance’s wife is reading a more than 800-page book about men fighting to control women’s bodies, waging war, and ‘refusing to accept a loss.’” This article ticks off so many Life Stories in Literature patterns: rewriting history, giving
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To read or not to read: Does COVID-19 belong in our books? Logan Brown, an arts writer for The Michigan Daily, writes the “ability to escape into another world is an essential requirement for me to like a book — when I am reminded of my own reality that escape is often broken.” She then
Books Aren’t Mental Movies: You’re Missing the Best Part of Reading BookRiot writer Danika Ellis caught my attention with this opening paragraph: Sometimes, when people describe what they love about reading, it feels like we’re doing two very different activities. They talk about a movie playing out in their mind’s eye as they read, imagined
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me 30 Years Ago Jim VandeHei adapted this article from his recent book Just the Good Stuff: No-BS Secrets to Success (No Matter What Life Throws At You). I give the book’s full title, including the long and awkward subtitle, because it carries the true point: This is not
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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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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
How the first National Book Awards reflected 1950s America “In the start of a new series reflecting on 75 years of the awards, Viet Thanh Nguyen writes about how societies and juries read and recognize literature” The National Book Awards will celebrate its 75th anniversary at this year’s ceremony, on Nov. 20. To mark the
How Pants Went From Banned to Required in the Roman Empire “Six hundred years in the history of trousers.” One of the most obvious functions of culture is the creation of customs about how people should or should not dress. Here Vittoria Traverso examines how, in ancient Rome, men’s wearing of pants gradually morphed from
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