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Literary Links

Top 10 books of eco-fiction

A blog challenge that I’m working on for next month includes a novel about climate fiction. This challenge made me realize that I haven’t read many works in which this topic figures prominently. I was therefore glad to come across this list by Michael Christie, whose recent novel Greenwood, set in 2038, features a vacation spot where wealthy tourists can visit one of the world’s last forests. In addition to Christie’s 10 choices, there are more than 150 reader comments, some of which suggest other titles. 

The Hottest New Literary Genre Is ‘Doomer Lit’

In another entry about climate fiction, Kate Knibbs describes the trend of doomer literature, which “calls pessimistic fatalism one of the major ‘paradigmatic responses to climate change in recent fiction.’”

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS WHO BREAK EVERY RULE WE THOUGHT WE KNEW

A good unreliable narrator is hard to resist. Here Michael Seidlinger takes the unreliable narrator trope a step beyond the usual: “Using a narrator that doesn’t stick to any preexisting rules makes for structural experimentation that changes the very way a story can be told.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel and the Feminist Disability Memoir

Patricia Grisafi writes a tribute to Elizabeth Wurtzel, whose works such as Prozac Nation (1994) address “the burden she feels as a Young Woman Of Promise who keeps letting people down because of her mental illness.” Wurtzel’s writings made Grisafi “felt seen in a way I had not since reading Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.”

Wurtzel, who died on January 7 [2020], made a generation of women feel as if their shitty lives might make a good book someday. She made me feel like I could get help for my seemingly broken brain.

The Outlander Effect: The popular book and TV series is increasing travel to these Scottish sites

Best-selling author Diana Gabaldon hadn’t even set foot in Scotland when she began the book that launched the popular Outlander series. But she’s made the country so attractive to readers — and to watchers of the Starz television program . . . — that the Scottish government’s tourism agency gave her an honorary Thistle Award for generating a flood of visitors to the fens, glens, jagged mountains and soft jade landscapes she so alluringly describes.

PRH Makes Progress in Green Initiatives

I usually avoid pieces based on public-relations announcements, but in light of the first two articles in this listing, that seems both appropriate and praiseworthy. Publishing giant Penguin Random House explains its plans “to publish its books responsibly and minimize its environmental impact.”

Top 10 random encounters in literature

British writer Will Harris, author of the recent poetry collection RENDANG, lists 10 works that “all helped me to imagine the self as a collision point.” Read his discussion in praise of the random encounters in literature.

© 2020 by Mary Daniels Brown

1 thought on “Literary Links”

  1. I’m definitely seeing a lot of doomer lit now. I enjoyed the article about the unreliable narrator. I’ve always admired writers who can pull it off effectively.

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