“Ghost Stories”: The ubiquitous anti-feminism of young adult romances In a Guardian article last November, Tanya Gold condemned the Twilight franchise and the paranormal progeny it has spawned, calling them sado-masochistic “disempowerment fantasies” masquerading as fairy tales, normalising abuse in the name of risqué romance. But her argument – though apt – hardly goes far […]
Amherst College: Emily Dickinson Collection To say Emily Dickinson has an association with Amherst College is a bit of an understatement. Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of the college and her father, Edward Dickinson, was treasurer of the school for over 35 years. In 1956, Millicent Todd Bingham gave Amherst
Hemingway family mental illness explored in new film Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, struggled with depression throughout his life before committing suicide in 1961. In this article from CNN, his gradddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, discusses a new documentary about the family that she hopes will increase awareness of and allow
The discovery of Mars in literature David Seed, author of Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, explains why the red planet has inspired so much speculative fiction. Reasons to Re-Joyce Is literary fiction really a dying breed? In The New York Times Darin Strauss argues that it is not: So things might look pretty bad. But
I read 42 books during 2012, for a total of 5,852 pages of print and just slightly more than 137 hours of unabridged audiobooks. Most best books of 2012 lists include only books issued this year. But my list includes anything I read during the year, regardless of when it was published. The oldest book
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What’s better than a “best of 2012 books list”? Why, a list of “best of 2012 books” lists. Here are two such lists of lists: Online “Best of 2012” Book Lists From Largehearted Boy. The Best of the Book Lists 2012 From Random House
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Book Riot Readers’ Top 25 Books of 2012 A couple weeks ago, we invited you to join in the end-of-year list making fun and share your favorite books of 2012. 530 of you answered the call, listing 572 individual titles. Click here to see all titles submitted and their corresponding vote counts. (Note: 33 entries were thrown
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Yes, they just keep rolling in. The 10 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2012 Maria Popova of Brain Pickings (and if you haven’t yet subscribed to her site in some format, you’ll definitely want to) chooses the best of the year’s books in psychology and philosophy—plus a bonus choice. And, as an added bonus,
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A Fixation with Endings There has been a lot of discussion lately about how novels end. On Bad Endings On The New Yorker‘s Page-Turner blog Joan Acocella declares: Many of the world’s best novels have bad endings. I don’t mean that they end sadly, or on a back-to-work, all-is-forgiven note (e.g. “War and Peace,” “The
The 10 Best Books of 2012 The venerable New York Times has declared its choices for the year’s 10 (5 fiction, 5 nonfiction) books. New York Times Best Of 2012: Alternative Reads But the folks at Huffington Post take issue with the New York Times‘s choices, calling its list “pretty dull” and also, apparently, pretty
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