Fiction

A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#8 “The Drowning People” by Richard Mason

Related Posts: #8 The Drowning People by Richard Mason © 2000 Date read: 2/1/2001 Richard Mason showed me how imagery and atmosphere can carry a novel and contribute to its meaning while also building tension and suspense. The concept of drowning that appears in the title recurs frequently with imagery about the sea, crashing waves, […]

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‘I will defeat Richard Osman!’: Holly Jackson on being Britain’s top selling female crime author Lucy Knight interviews YA novelist Holly Jackson, whose book series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is currently being adapted into a BBC TV series. According to Knight, “Jackson’s books are some of the most recommended among the #BookTok community.”

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#7 “Drowning Ruth” by Cristina Schwarz

Related Posts: #7 Drowning Ruth by Cristina Schwarz © 2000 Date read: 2/1/2001 Many of the themes that I’d been reading about since Portrait of the Artist come together in this novel: how childhood informs the adults we become, how people who share the same experience react to and remember it differently, how time and context

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“A Nation of Lunatics.” What Oscar Wilde Thought About America “Rob Marland on the Irish Writer’s Grand Tour of the Gilded Age United States” This article caught my eye because I had just finished catching up on the second season of the HBO series The Gilded Age, which includes a trip to the opera by

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#6 “The Short History of a Prince” by Jane Hamilton

Related Posts: #6 The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton © 1998 Date read: 2/24/2000 This book would not have the same effect on me if I read it now for the first time as it did when I read it more than 20 years ago. Some issues that we now take for

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Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened Rachel Gordan, assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, discloses that Betty Smith herself had a different experience of life in Brooklyn than does the

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feature: Life Stories in Literature

Review: “Long Bright River” by Liz Moore

Set in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, Long Bright River humanizes the problems U.S. cities and their residents struggle with. Formerly a center of business and industry, Kensington is now home to abandoned and decaying former warehouses and factories, remnants of an earlier era when commerce and industry flourished.  As the novel opens, a police

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Historic photo: black and white image of a crowd of women suffragettes dressed in white marching on a city street lined by men in dark suits.

2 Novels to Read for Women’s History Month

In honor of International Women’s Day today, here are two novels that feature strong women. I reread the first 11 pages of this paperback to refresh my memory before writing this review. And immediately, I was right back as a passenger on the wild ride of this fictional world. The first clue to the nature

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A stack of 3 closed books (left); an open notebook with a pen on top (right). Title: 12 Novels Thata Changed How I Read Fiction

#5 “The Debt to Pleasure” by John Lanchester

Related Posts: #5 The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester © 1996 Date read: 7/12/1998 I don’t recall ever feeling the need to like fictional characters, yet this topic recurs periodically when readers condemn a book they’ve just finished because “I didn’t like any of the characters.” But if I ever did feel such a

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