The dawn of the post-literate society If the reading revolution [of the middle of the eighteenth century] represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the [current] screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history. James Marriott laments the “draining away of culture, critical thinking […]
I don’t write fiction, but I do read a lot of it. All that reading has made me think that the very first question fiction writers must ask themselves is Whose story is this to tell? Writer Elaine Hsieh Chou suggests a similar thought in a recent interview: And Chou’s quotation further suggests that examining
“The Transcendence of Writing Your Fears” Read More »
The Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait The powers that be at Oxford University Press have chosen rage bait as their word of the year for 2025. Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to
The Essential Kate Atkinson “Surprising, versatile, dark and funny, the British writer has something for (almost) everyone.” Kate Atkinson’s 1995 novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum stands atop my list of Books to Reread, and I swear that some September (my traditional rereading month) I’m going to get to it. Just about everyone in
If you’re still looking for some short reads to hit your annual reading goal, here are some suggestions. 4 Novellas I’ve Come Across (Links are to the Goodreads description.) The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada (138 pages) The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick (192 pages) Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (176
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Related Post: In addition to three works of nonfiction, I also listened to two novels this month. We learn about humanity from stories of individual lives. In A Calamity of Souls David Baldacci introduced us to two people fighting for civil rights during the Jim Crow era in the American South. The historical novel Strangers in
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What’s Real and What’s Not: Gish Jen on Writing Between the Factual Lines “Finding the sweet spot between memoir and fiction” Writer Gish Jen considers writing situations that fall somewhere between memoir—or nonfiction—and fiction: “Might the author hope that his or her account, to whatever genre it belongs, will move the reader in a way
Merriam-Webster, the country’s oldest dictionary publisher which is headquartered in Springfield, just released an updated Collegiate edition with 5,000 new entries. Source: Merriam-Webster goes old school with first new hardcover Collegiate dictionary in 22 years | WBUR News I guess it’s time to order a new dictionary.
The Best Literary Love Stories A satisfying literary love story doesn’t need to end happily ever after—but one does need to be left with a sense that two characters belong together, advises the novelist Lily King . . . Thomas Mallon’s Theory of the Diary “The New York writer and editor’s diaries of the AIDS
Related Post: I had a dismal reading month in terms of numbers: I finished only one audiobook. But that one was not dismal at all; in fact, I found it rewarding because it was written by Joy Fielding, a writer I was glad to have rediscovered. We meet Linda Davidson, our first-person narrator, as she
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