Literary Links

Seven Books to Read When You Have No Time to Read

“When life gets really hectic, sitting quietly with a book can feel like an impossible luxury,” writes Bekah Waalkes. “What works best for me, though, is choosing just the right book.”

Here she suggests some books “representing varied genres” that you might “actually want to finish.”

Jack Kerouac Lists 9 Essentials for Writing Spontaneous Prose

Jack Kerouac wants you to turn writing into “free deviation (association) of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of thought, swimming in sea of English with no discipline, other than rhythms of rhetorical exhalation and expostulated statement….” Think you can do that?

I know a lot of my former Eng Comp 101 students would have loved to be able to follow some of this essential advice.

The Left Case for Great Books

The American left . . . having painted a compelling and persuasive picture of a political life that should empower ordinary citizens and of a working life that ought to be a source of pride and dignity, has not been able to make a similar case about what education is for.

Daniel Walden, “a leftist myself and a university professor,” discusses why he thinks a course based on what academics have come to think of as The Great Books makes a good basis for a leftist plan of education. 

While I actually hate to see this discussion framed as a political one, I do agree with Walden’s aim here, that “it’s possible to teach and learn in a way that does not speak to making a living but simply to living.” And understanding what he’s getting at also illustrates why the political right is so afraid of universities and what they teach: people who can explore and think for themselves are not likely to follow sheepishly.

The Books That Blew These Scientists’ Minds

“12 leading researchers tell us about the book that opened a new world for them”

How often do you venture to “read outside your comfort zone”? Nautilus reports on what scientists have to say about what they discovered when they did just that. The books that influenced them comprise both nonfiction and fiction.

Judging the Author, Not the Book: Exploring the Discourse of the Shafak Plagiarism Case

Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s most globally renowned writers, having been translated into over fifty languages, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and named a Chevalier of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. As such, when she was accused and then indicted of plagiarism in 2021, it sent deep reverberations throughout the Turkish literary scene. In this following essay, Neriman Kuyucu Norman examines the details of the case against Shafak—and why it is always important to look beyond the surface representation of such matters.

The author of this essay, Neriman Kuyucu Norman, is a reader, writer, and researcher who teaches literature at Sabancı University, Istanbul. Norman writes that she was drawn to this case after reading R.F. Kuang’s 2023 novel Yellowface: 

The case against Shafak brings the core dilemma of Kuang’s narrative to the forefront: What constitutes plagiarism within the realm of creative writing? Can a concept or a literary idea ever truly be owned by a single person? How does public reaction recalibrate the parameters of intellectual theft?

Who Cares if Matt Damon’s ‘Odyssey’ Helmet Is Historically Accurate?

“What are fans really searching for when they nitpick new adaptations for anachronisms?”

Movies that have failed to replicate their sources have maddened viewers and authors alike for decades. . . . But social media and streaming video have enabled (and incentivized) a new degree of online pedantry and nit-picking.

Writer Paul McAdory speculates that “[l]ooking to canonical texts for something unchanging (as well as for a representation of a more concrete, ostensibly simpler past, however fantastical or realistic) might imply a certain queasiness or instability in our relation to the present.”

Have You Ever Tried Going on a Blind Date With a Book?

Jess deCourcy Hinds writes, “Blind Date with a Book turned 13 the year my older daughter did, so I thought I’d assemble 13 facts, musings, and tidbits about this literary phenomenon.”

© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown