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 […]
PEN America Rejects Calls to Cancel Coney Barrett Book Last week’s Literary Links included an article about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book advance as well as an article about PEN America’s report on diversity in the publishing industry. This week we have a link to Publishers Weekly’s news that PEN America has condemned the
How Gruesome Penny Dreadfuls Got Victorian Children Reading “Despite causing a moral panic, these salacious tales helped boost literacy in Victorian England.” Even if you don’t read the article, take a gander at the illustrations. I’m Glad I Don’t Picture Anything When I Read Here’s an article on aphantasia or “mind blindness.” It attracted my
We Need More Dark Stories with Hopeful Endings Author Les Edgerton believes that dark novels needn’t have completely dark endings: “To endure page after page of never-ending pain and sorrow and to culminate in the same morass of tragedy would only be nihilism, and the best books don’t end like that.” Here he lists some
The Economics of Coronavirus: A Reading List I’ve been thinking a lot about what the world will look like once the COVID-19 pandemic is over, but my speculations are mostly social and political. I know absolutely nothing about economics beyond balancing my checkbook, which is why I took particular notice of this article from Five
“What Do I Know To Be True?”: Emma Copley Eisenberg on Truth in Nonfiction, Writing Trauma, and The Dead Girl Newsroom Jacqueline Alnes talks with Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of true-crime book The Third Rainbow Girl, “about what it means to seek truth in nonfiction, and how writing the personal can allow for more complicated
Here are some of the articles that got me thinking over the past week. On Impact Stephen King experienced (celebrated doesn’t seem like the appropriate word) an anniversary last week: 20 years since the automobile accident that nearly killed him. He wrote this article for The New Yorker a year after the accident. The Weird,
Hunter S. Thompson and the Sanity of Writers A short appreciation of writer Hunter S. Thompson, who often claimed to have done much of his writing “half out of his skull,” under the influence of drugs and alcohol. This link is worth clicking just to see the illustrations. THE GENERATION THAT GREW UP ON STEPHEN
How Stephen King Made Pop Culture Weird If you’ve ever been to Austin, TX, you’ve seen the bumper stickers: “Keep Austin Weird.” Even my new hometown of Tacoma, WA, likes to call itself weird, as does Portland, OR, in the photo above. Lincoln Michel explains that these are not isolated occurrences: If you haven’t heard,
Related Posts: 10 Big Books I Have Read & Loved 6 Big Books I Keep Meaning to Reread 6 Big Books on My Reading List I’ve been writing a lot about Big Books lately. Since I no longer continue to slog through books that don’t engage me (although I’ll give a Big Book, one of
2 Big Books That Disappointed Me Read More »
