Fiction

The Classics Club

Gothic Elements in Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle”

Fiction, Literary Criticism, Literary History, The Classics Club / By / / ,

Gothic literature features characteristics such as magic, mystery, chivalry, horror, clanking chains, ghosts, and dark castles to create a spooky atmosphere rife with foreboding and possibility. Over time Gothic emphasis changed from reliance on these external trappings for their own sake to a focus on the inner workings of the human psyche that the Gothic […]

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Monday Miscellany

Book Recommendations, Fiction, Film, Libraries, Monday Miscellany / By /

Open Library Open Library is an open, editable library catalog with an attractive facade and a lofty mission. The mission? To build an online catalog with a web page for every book ever published. The best part? You can help. From the homepage, click Sign Up, then create a free Open Library account in two

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Life Stories: The Personal Component

Fiction, Life Stories in Literature, Literature & Psychology / By /

Related Posts: Introduction to Life Stories “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember Review of The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen We all carry around a life story that expresses who we are and that contains our sense of identity. Introduction to Life Stories discusses how cultural influences such

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Monday Miscellany

Author News, Book Recommendations, Fiction, Libraries, Monday Miscellany, Reading, Writing / By /

Tragic fiction may leave you emotionally upset It might seem logical that reading a sad fictional story would be less upsetting than reading a less sad but true story. But new research suggests this is not the case: “Consumers may choose to read a tragic fictional story because they assume that knowing it was fictional

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Monday Miscellany

Author News, Book Recommendations, Fiction, Literary History, Monday Miscellany / By /

Required Reading: 10 Books We Read For Class That Will Change Your Life As summer winds down, many students turn with desperation to those lists of required summer reading that they put aside a couple of months ago. But not all assigned reading is dull and unfulfilling, the editors at Huffington Post say: Sometimes reading

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Before I Go to Sleep”: The Film

Fiction, Film, Life Stories in Literature, Literature & Psychology / By / /

Before I Go To Sleep: Exclusive film stills show Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth in new psychological thriller Related Posts: Introduction to Life Stories “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember These emotive images depict Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman as a woman who wakes up every morning remembering nothing in the

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Novelist Lev Grossman on Narrative

Fiction, Literary Criticism, Quotation / By /

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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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember

Fiction, Life Stories in Literature, Literature & Psychology, Review / By /

  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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woman reading

A Dozen Mysteries and Thrillers That Blew Me Away

Book Recommendations, Fiction, List / By / /

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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Monday Miscellany

Author News, Fiction, Monday Miscellany / By / /

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

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