American Dirt Starts An Important Conversation But Not The One Author Intended I avoided the recent brouhaha over Jeanine Cummins’ novel American Dirt while it was developing, but most of the dust seems to have settled now. If you looking for a summary of the situation, this article provides a good overview. It also contains […]
The Subjective Mood Adam O’Fallon Price describes Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie like this: “The novel does not settle for merely telling a story and telling it well; it also on some level considers that story and frames it, in doing so giving the narrative a greater dimensionality, what we might
The Million Basic Plots Novelist and screenwriter Ned Beauman laments the existence of the website TV Tropes, which breaks down the plots of all forms of popular-culture storytelling into such minute parts as to prevent him from coming up with any original plot elements. I don’t write fiction but I love reading it, and I
Looking for a Book to Read With Friends? The New York Times introduces Group Text, “a monthly column for readers and book clubs about the novels, memoirs and short-story collections that make you want to talk, ask questions, and dwell in another world for a little bit longer.” The focus for book clubs will be
Why I’ll Never Read a Book a Week Ever Again Calling herself a slow reader, writer Hurley Winkler describes her 2019 experience of “the 52 books in 52 weeks reading challenge” she found on the literary blogosphere. During the year she finished several books she “wasn’t wild about” simply because she’d already invested time in
What to read in 2020 based on the books you loved in 2019 If you liked any of the 12 books listed here, Angela Haupt has suggestions about what you might like to read this year. The 12 books from 2019 that she references are: “City of Girls,” by Elizabeth Gilbert “All This Could Be
How a Twitter war in 2010 helped change the way we talk about women’s writing A look at how the 2010 dust-up between writers Jennifer Weiner and Jonathan Franzen engendered a decade-long pop culture discussion over two basic questions: “What kinds of stories do we consider to be worthy of respect? And to whom do
CANDID PORTRAITS OR GHOSTWRITTEN FLUFF: THE HISTORY OF THE CELEBRITY BOOK Jeffrey Davies looks at the history of the celebrity book, whether it be “a memoir, an essay collection, a cookbook, a book of poetry, or a self-help book.” He discusses the rise of the ghostwriter, what happens when celebrity culture and science clash (for
Romance Is a Billion-Dollar Literary Industry. So Why Is It Still So Overlooked? Samantha Leach writes in Glamour that romance novels have evolved from the steamy bodice-rippers of the early 1970s to mid 1980s into works that deal meaningfully with “whatever is happening to women or marginalized people.” ON FAILING THE GOODREADS CHALLENGE P.N. Hinton
Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Louise Adams discusses the history of the metaphor of eating as applied to reading. While the historical applications of the metaphor are informative, I’d like to focus on this point: This metaphor, however, hasn’t always seemed so benign. Two hundred years ago, describing someone as
