Fiction

Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Five Writing Tips from Tana French I usually stay away from tips aimed specifically at writers, but I found some of French’s tips here useful for readers as well as writers, especially what she has to say about characters: There’s no such thing as ‘men’ or ‘women.’ There’s only the individual character you’re writing… . […]

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Last Week's Links

8 Tips For Overcoming ’Reader’s Block’ I can’t remember ever encountering reader’s block. My own problem is usually the opposite: other life duties that prevent me from spending as much time as I’d like to spend reading. Nevertheless, Emily Petsko asserts: “Reader’s block” is a well-documented problem, and even avid readers occasionally suffer from it.

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

THE SIMPLE JOY OF REREADING TO BREAK A READING SLUMP Julia Rittenberg has a confession to make: I used to have a great deal of anxiety around keeping up with others’ reading paces. Social media heightened my awareness of reading habits, and worries that my own were woefully behind. I would be unable to choose

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Introduction to Reading Other Women At a time when female “others”—black, brown, and yellow—together constitute the largest block of the world’s population, their persistent invisibility to Westerners not only means they are overlooked in the present moment, but that they are consistently erased from the historical record. Rafia Zakaria reacts against “the challenges that arise

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Last Week’s Links: Halloween Edition

It’s only the middle of the month, so you’ve got some time to get into the Halloween book/film mood. Here are some suggestions. WOMEN, TRAUMA, AND HAUNTED HOUSES Sarah Smeltzer writes: The haunted house is a staple of the horror genre and it’s easy to see why. Your house should be familiar and it should

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man reading a big book

5 Big Books I’ve Read or Reread Recently

It’s been a while since I wrote about my love for Big Books (tomes of 500 or more pages). Here are the five most recent ones I’ve read. A Column of Fire by Ken Follett, 928 pages This is the final entry in Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge trilogy. (The first two are Pillars of the Earth,

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older adults in literature

Introducing a New Category: Older Adults in Literature

Over on my personal blog I write on topics of interest to people approaching or already into their retirement years. When writing on the United Nations’ International Day of Older Persons, which occurs each year on October 1, I included a list of five novels that feature older adult characters. Being of retirement age myself,

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

Why Doctors Should Read Fiction Students in medical school and nursing traditionally study ethics through the use of case studies, short synopses of situations the students may face later in their careers. This article describes a recent paper from the journal Literature and Medicine that suggests replacing case studies with short stories that present ethical

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

I’ve come across lots of interesting stuff lately. When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life I’m including this article on all my blogs this week because it’s important that everyone with any online presence, no matter how small, read it. 50 MUST-READ CONTEMPORARY ESSAY COLLECTIONS From Book Riot’s Liberty Hardy: To prove that there

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Last Week's Links

Last Week’s Links

100 Books to Read Before You Die When you find yourself not knowing what book to pick up next, here’s a list that contains “a mix of modern fiction, true stories, and timeless classics.” The deep roots of writing Was writing invented for accounting and administration or did it evolve from religious movements, sorcery and

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