Preparing this list is my least favorite task of the year. Here are the people from the writing and publishing worlds whom we lost during 2014, including, where available, a link to an obituary and date of death. Elizabeth Jane Howard 1/2 Tom Rosenthal Amiri Baraka 1/9 Juan Gelman 1/14 Leslie Lee 1/20 Jose Emilio […]
Remembering Those We Lost in 2014 Read More »
There Are Way Too Many ‘Best Of 2014′ Lists If you despair over working your way through all these lists, just take a look at Hayley Munguia’s distillation: I set about compiling lists of the best books, movies and TV shows of 2014 in prominent national publications.1 My colleague Andrew Flowers helped me run the
In books by soldiers and reporters about Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s the details that slam home a sense of what the wars were like on the front lines: a suicide bomber’s head pulled from the rubble of the mosque he’d bombed; the sonogram of an unborn child found among a soldier’s remains; a bomb technician
Human Costs of the Forever Wars, Enough to Fill a Bookshelf Read More »
Guns, gay marriage and a real-life murder: The private life of thriller writer Patricia Cornwell Patricia Cornwell’s insecurities are rooted in a life story that reads like an over-ripe work of fiction. Married to neuroscientist Staci Gruber Cornwell is more grounded these days The Henry Ford of Books The planet’s best-selling author since 2001, James
Related Post: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING: A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY If you watch HBO’s drama The Newsroom, you’ve seen the introductory clip in which an editor scans a printed story by running her hand quickly down the page. While this is an appropriate, even necessary, reading method for keeping up with a daunting amount of news
I woke up a couple of days ago with this thought: I should challenge myself to write a blog post every day during 2015. I dismissed this thought right away because such a huge commitment seems like setting myself up for failure. Why not just commit to writing a post a day for the month
Personal Challenge: A Blog Post a Day in 2015 Read More »
PD James: in quotes A list of quotations about writing and mysteries from British mystery novelist P. D. James, who died recentlyat the age of 94. Here’s my favorite from this list: I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder, which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which
Jonathan Yardley’s favorite books This is not a “best books of the year” list: As longtime Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley retires this week, he lists some of the books he’s cherished most during his 33-year tenure with Book World. Some of the titles here he reviewed for The Post, and others he read
The best biographies and memoirs of 2014 From the U. K.’s The Guardian: “ this year’s roundup of life writing.” The best poetry books of 2014 Also from the U. K.’s The Guardian Best Books 2014: Slate Staff Picks Slate’s columnists, editors, and bloggers pick their favorite books of the year. Our Favorite Books of
The “best books of the year” lists will be coming thick and fast. I’ll try to keep up with them here. Writers pick the best books of 2014: part one It’s been a year of calls to action. Naomi Klein tackled climate change, Owen Jones got to grips with class politics, and Russell Brand preached
