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 […]
Happy New Year! And welcome back. Read ahead for 2013 Jane Sullivan of Australia’s The Age clues us in on books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) to be published this year. Announcing the 2013 Tournament of Books To add to your March madness: The ToB is an annual springtime event here at the Morning News, where
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
It’s been a good week for literature-relating reading. The Top 10 Charles Dickens Books Robert Gottlieb, author of Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens, explains why he thinks these are Dickens’s 10 best books: Great Expectations Our Mutual Friend David Copperfield Bleak House Little Dorrit Oliver Twist Nicholas Nickleby Dombey and Son
For Your Holiday Gift-Giving Now that the winter holiday gift-giving season has officially arrived, here are a couple of items to keep in mind: Holidaze, Book Riot’s Pinterest Board 100 books for holiday gift-giving, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Media Elite: The Best Literary Cameos Ever Committed to Film Though an author’s film cameo
Some interesting takes on the literary world this week. Out of Touch: E-reading isn’t reading Slate caused quite a stir recently with its publication of this excerpt from Andrew Piper’s recent book Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (University of Chicago Press, 2012): Amid the seemingly endless debates today about the future of reading,
Today’s links. The Most Dysfunctional Families in Literature Neuroses run rampant across three generations of the Middlestein family in Jami Attenberg’s sublime new novel, The Middlesteins. See why Attenberg includes the families from the following books on her list: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver A Game
Here’s some reading to start off your week. Five Smarter Ways to Nurture Reading Sari Harrar has suggestions, based on recent research, for helping children learn to read and to enjoy reading. This one is my favorite: Link the story to their lives. Pause when you read and ask kids how the story connects to their
This week’s links. Did You Just Pay Too Much for That eBook? If you own any kind of ereader (Kindle, Nook, iPad or other tablet, Kobo), you must read this article by Shannon Rupp. When she goes in search of a novel published in 1924, this is what she found: So as a consumer on
Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: Why the Best Mysteries Are Written in English From the pen of Otto Penzler: It is an inarguable fact that virtually everything of interest and significance in the history of detective fiction has been written in the English language, mainly by American and English authors. This is not
