Between the post-publication recall of Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth and the cancelation of contracts for upcoming political books, my head is spinning. This will probably be quite a rambling discussion, because I am truly of two minds on these kinds of issues. ‘There Is a Tension There’: Publishers Draw Fire for Signing Trump […]
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How Crime Writers Can Reimagine Public Safety Without Police “The next wave of crime fiction could help shape the public imagination of what a world where police weren’t in charge of public safety could look like.” Historically, crime fiction has portrayed the police as heroes. But that vision of law enforcement is becoming hazier for
Captivating Novels about Astrology In her introduction to this list, Laura Maylene Walter, author of the novel Body of Stars, calls herself “a skeptic who doesn’t read horoscopes in my daily life.” But, she continues, “hand me a work of fiction about astrology or psychics, and I’m captivated.” Many of the books on this list
Beverly Cleary, beloved and prolific author of children’s books, dies at 104 Obituary from the Los Angeles Times. Larry McMurtry, Novelist of the American West, Dies at 84 Obituary from the New York Times. I Always Write in the Past: The Millions Interviews André Aciman Here’s a fascinating article in which André Aciman talks about
A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism in America “Anti-Asian violence and discrimination has increased precipitously, but it has a long history in the United States” Jae-Yeon Yoo and Stefani Kuo offer a reading list to help readers in the U.S. better understand racism against Asian Americans: We’ve compiled this list as a way to
The time is right to cancel Dr. Seuss’s racist books One of the biggest literary stories recently is the decision by the company that controls the works of Dr. Seuss to pull six titles from future republication because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” Here Ron Charles, book critic for the
New Report Explores ‘Engagement’ with Books, Digital Media A new report released this week is being billed as the first study to capture critical data about how consumers “engage” with books within a “connected media ecosystem” that includes video games, TV, and movies. According to Publishers Weekly, “The study’s focus on consumer ‘engagement’ with books—vs.
What’s Behind the Label ‘Domestic Fiction’? Soledad Fox Maura, professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Williams College and soon-to-debut novelist, wonders why World Cat “(the biggest library search engine on the planet)” has classified her upcoming novel, Madrid Again, as domestic fiction: Why would my novel, about an itinerant bilingual mother and daughter who
Using Neuroscience to Understand Reading Slumps Joshua C. Craig, who spent an undergraduate year studying neuroscience, read up on the scientific literature to see what the current thinking is on the subject of reading slumps. He does a good job of making the subject accessible for those of us without a hefty science background. A
Overlooked No More: Clarice Lispector, Novelist Who Captivated Brazil “Critics lauded her stream-of-consciousness style and described her as glamorous and mysterious. But she didn’t always welcome the attention she received.” “This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.” From the
