Hanif Kureishi’s Relentlessly Revealing Memoir “How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again” In December 2022, at age 68, writer Hanif Kureishi fell onto a hard floor in Rome and woke up a tetraplegic. Hillary Kelly visited Kureishi in London in December 2024 and here describes that visit and comments on […]
What We Learn About Our World by Imagining Its End Arthur Krystal ponders the stories humans have devised about when and how the world will end: “Having to come to terms with this eventuality [the end of the world] is the price we pay for being able to imagine it in the first place.” Tash
Six Trick Novels That Play with Form One of my favorite kind of fiction is a book that plays with form. Here Gareth Rubin, writer of both fiction and nonfiction, discusses 6 novels that do just that. His list includes one of my all-time favorites, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018) by Stuart Turton.
BookLooks, RatedBooks, and Other Unprofessional Book “Review” Sites to Know: Book Censorship News, January 10, 2025 “One of the trends we’ll see in book censorship over 2025 is the increased use of unprofessional, politically-driven book review websites like BookLooks to make decisions in professional library and educational settings,” writes Kelly Jensen for Book Riot. I
Holy cow! This is my second book by R.F. Kuang (the first was Babel), and I’m blown away not only by her ability to write but also by her ability to think–and deeply–about the issues she’s asking readers to confront. In this satirical gem she takes on the publishing industry and all the various officious
“Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang Read More »
How AI is unlocking ancient texts — and could rewrite history “From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries.” As ominous as the threat of generative AI replacing writers is, there are some kinds of things that AI can be legitimately
Just about a year ago I wrote what Notes in the Margin would be up to during 2024. Now, I’m happy with the way last year’s reading turned out, particularly how I ended the year with a sense of accomplishment rather than anxiety and disappointment. Therefore, I’m going to use the same approach to reading
2025: Another Year of Unplanned Reading Read More »
Jimmy Carter: Poet, Novelist, Memoirist, Philosopher “He wasn’t just prolific, publishing 32 books. His output also showed an unusual range that included memoirs and forays into historical fiction and even poetry.” The New York Times eulogizes President Jimmy Carter with emphasis on his writing: “Publishing 32 books over the course of his life, he wasn’t
Goodreads has spoken. Here are my reading statistics for 2024. Pages read: 14,887 Books read: 41 Average book length: 363 pages Average book rating: 3.5 Shortest book: Lord of the Flies, 189 pages Longest book: The Covenant of Water, 724 pages What the Statistics Don’t Cover Irrespective of numbers, I had what I consider a
2024: My Year in Reading and Blogging Read More »
Full disclosure: I signed up for the 2024 Discussion Challenge and did a miserable job at it. In evaluating my year of blogging in 2024, I realized that I actually did more discussion than I thought, but I didn’t specifically frame and label much of it as discussion. However, lately I’ve been thinking, more than
I’m Signing Up for the 2025 Discussion Challenge Read More »
