Lev Grossman: My depression helped inspire the Magicians trilogy – Salon.com. I think literary critics — of whom you’re one and I’m another — are much better at describing beauty on the sentence level than we are at talking about the grace of a narrative twist or wonderful pacing or the thrilling tension that a […]
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Related Post: Introduction to Life Stories Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel by S. J. Watson HarperCollins, 2011 Kindle Edition A woman awakens, wonders where she is, rolls over—and is shocked to see a middle-aged man wearing a wedding ring and with hairs on his back sleeping next to her. She stumbles
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Although we tend to think of mysteries and thrillers together, there is a difference: In a mystery, the reader sees the clues and, near the end, discovers the culprit along with the fictional detective. In a thriller, the reader learns early on who the villain is and watches as the hero and the villain try
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A New Book About To Kill a Mockingbird Author Harper Lee? Last week saw the announcement of a new book about Harper Lee, The Mockingbird Next Door by Chicago Tribune reporter Marja Mills. USA Today explains how Mills obtained material about the notoriously reclusive and publicity-shy Lee: Mills was able to penetrate Lee’s wariness by
During a recent book group discussion of John Updike’s novel Rabbit, Run, someone said, “I don’t particularly like any of the characters in this book.” I had to admit that I agreed with this assessment, but that truth doesn’t affect my appreciation of the book. This seemingly casual reference to not liking fictional characters
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THE STARS OF THESE YOUNG ADULT BOOKS SWEAR, STRUGGLE, AND GENERALLY ACT LIKE REAL TEENS In the new novel Aspen by Rebekah Crane, the teenage title character is an awkward, artsy kid who gets into a car accident that kills the most popular girl at school. The book traces the bizarre fallout in her Boulder,
Additions to Your TBR List Just in case your TBR (to-be-read) list isn’t long enough, here are two articles with recommendations you can add. 10 overlooked novels: how many have you read? Most novels come, have their day, and are gone. For ever. Most deserve their “do not resuscitate” label. Every so often, though, a
The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time Edited by Mary Louise Aswell Notes and Introduction by Frederic Wertham, M.D. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947 The World Within was one of the first literary collections assembled to spotlight a psychological approach to literature. It couples a literary editor’s introductory remarks with analysis
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Harlan Coben: By the Book This week’s New York Times‘s Sunday Book Review includes an interview with one of my favorite thriller authors, Harlan Coben. Related Posts: Harlan Coben in St. Louis: Part I Harlan Coben in St. Louis: Part II From Distant Admirers to Library Lovers–and beyond The Pew Research Center continues its study of
Book review: “The Golden Thread: The Story of Writing,” by Ewan Clayton Anyone who loves books will be interested in this book, which tells the story of typography: Writing matters, says Ewan Clayton, calligrapher, former monk, design and media professor and visual consultant to Xerox in Palo Alto, Calif., the folks who made the first
