Fiction

Monday Miscellany

The Best Book You’ve Never Read: ‘Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age’ On the Publishers Weekly blog Gabe Habash describes what can be an elusive concept, narrative voice: Books that are voice-driven are, of course, dependent on the strength of the voice. Think about the best character-narrators you’ve read: maybe it’s Scout or Holden Caulfield […]

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Monday Miscellany

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards The Coretta Scott King Book Award was founded in 1969 in honor of the late Mrs. Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for her passion and dedication to working for peace. The awards are given to “outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for

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Monday Miscellany

Robert McCloskey Sketches for “Make Way for Ducklings” Born in 1914 in Hamilton, Ohio, Robert McCloskey came to Boston to attend the now-defunct Vesper George Art School. He left to live in New York for a time and established a career as an author and illustrator in the late 1930s. Over the years, he became

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Monday Miscellany: Big Literary News Edition

Meet Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature The big literary news of last week was the announcement of Canadian writer Alice Munro as recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro is generally considered to be the current master of the short-fiction form. The announcement generated a lot of articles about Munro’s

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Monday Miscellany

10 Impressive Uses of Borrowed Characters in Literature Kim Newman, whose latest book, Johnny Alucard, is out now, tells us: “In the Anno Dracula series, I’ve made use not only of characters and situations appropriated from Bram Stoker’s novel but a host of other preexisting fictional folk to populate the next-door-but-one world where Dracula defeated Van Helsing and

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Monday Miscellany

11 Required Reading Books You Should Re-Read Now That You’re Older Madeleine Crum thinks you’d benefit from rereading these books that you were probably required to struggle through in English classes while growing up. I have actually reread several of these in recent years, and I agree with her assessment that they have much more

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Monday Miscellany

17 Most Screwed Up Relationships In Books From Oedipus and Jocasta to Anastasia and Christian Grey, here are the most dysfunctional book couples. Trust us, these people will make you feel good about your worst relationship. To which list I would add those kids from Flowers in the Attic. 20 Of The Biggest Dick Moves

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Monday Miscellany

In ‘Alphabet’ Mysteries, ‘S’ Is Really For Santa Barbara It’s good to catch up with one of my favorite mystery writers, Sue Grafton, creator of private investigator Kinsey Millhone (rhymes with brimstone): The next book will be “W” Is for Wasted. Grafton promises “z” will be for “zero” — and after she finishes that one,

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Monday Miscellany

Little Libertarians on the prairie Christine Woodside argues that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, journalist Rose Wilder Lane, edited her mother’s reminiscences into books that project a Libertarian point of view: A close examination of the Wilder family papers suggests that Wilder’s daughter did far more than transcribe her mother’s pioneer tales: She shaped them and

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Monday Miscellany

There are a couple of sad stories about well known authors to report: Elmore Leonard, 87, has suffered a stroke Harper Lee, 87, is the victim of elder abuse But there is some good news about libraries and librarians: State of America’s Libraries Report 2013 Libraries and library staff continue to respond to the needs

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