It’s National Read a Book Day!
Which one will you pull from the shelf?
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Literary Links
Dread, War and Ambivalence: Literature Since the Towers Fell The events of 9/11 irrevocably changed the course of global affairs. They also changed culture. It will likely be easier to say how a century from now. But with 20 years’ hindsight, The Times’s book critics reflect below on some of the influence of that day
6 Degrees of Separation: Prize-Worthy Coming-of-Age Novels
This month we start with 2021 Booker Prize nominee, Second Place by Rachel Cusk. Here’s the book description from Goodreads: A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. His provocative presence provides the
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Quotation: Emma Cline
“It’s a strange moment in the culture, rootless and atomized, and we’ve stopped buying into a lot of the default older structures for making sense of the world—the family unit, large-scale religion, duties to some larger moral order. It does feel like the responsibility for meaning has been shifted onto the individual, so I think
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Literary Links
The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero’s Journey? Sarah E. Bond and Joel Christensen dispute Joseph Campbell’s well-known theory “which proposed the existence of a singular ‘hero’s journey’ (also known as the Monomyth), as experienced by ancient heroes such as Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey.” How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned
Quotation: Steph Cha
“the actual process of writing a novel is very much like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle. You can’t always see the whole thing at the same time. The more you work, the more it becomes clear. A lot of putting together a jigsaw puzzle is just patience, and looking around for the right pieces. It’s
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Literary Links
Censorship on the Rise Worldwide A report from Publishers Weekly: “Since the start of the Covid pandemic, there’s been a rise in instances of government censorship of books around the world.” 3 Things to Know About the Ending of a Story I see a lot of discussion in literature-related posts about fictional introductions, but not
Review: “We Are the Brennans”
In this month’s 6 Degrees of Separation I expressed my love for big, sprawling family sagas. I think that love is one part of my motivation for choosing We Are the Brennans as my July 2021 Book of the Month book. Another motivator was Joyce Carol Oates’s memorable novel We Were the Mulvaneys (scroll down
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Quotation: Alice McDermott
“In the past, I’ve always been on the writer’s side, hoping for every book’s success, cheering it on — a habit born of teaching young writers for so many years. But these days, I worry about the poor reader subsisting on clichés and foregone conclusions. I worry about young adult fiction — a worthy genre
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Literary Links
11 Translated Books by Asian Women Writers to Read This #WITMonth More suggestions in honor of Women in Translation Month. The Buffoonery of White Supremacy Trying to Disguise Itself as Literature “Tracing the history of white supremacy storytelling back to William Faulkner” Taking note of the items worn by the insurrectionists at the U.S. Capital