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 […]
Start you week off right, with some book-related reading. 10 reasons we still love J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ Here’s a list to warm you up for the December 21 opening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson’s film adaptation (Part 1) of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel. A Short Defense of Literary Excess Novelist Ben
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
The question of what exactly a book review is and what it should do comes up often on the internet. So far I’ve tried to avoid it, because it’s a big question that requires a big answer. But the question is impossible to avoid this morning, with two particular articles getting lots of mention on
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Some of what I’ve been reading over the last week: Why J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ Isn’t Just For Kids On the 75th anniversary (September 21) of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first novel, The Hobbit, Corey Olsen explains why the book isn’t just for kids: “The Hobbit” is a brilliantly constructed story unfolding themes that
Taproot woos fans of Dorothy L. Sayers in upcoming ‘Gaudy Night’ | The Arts | The Seattle Times Seattle Times theater critic Misha Berson provides some background on Dorothy L. Sayer’s ground-breaking character, Harriet Vane: And what was groundbreaking about both “Strong Poison” and “Gaudy Night”? The brilliance and fierce independence of a witty, learned
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Some weeks seem slow in terms of good book-related reading, while others, like this one, throw one interesting article after another my way. I’m guessing the reason is not so much a function of what everyone else is writing as it is of how much effort I put forth to find good material to recommend.
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
Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels A while back NPR asked readers/listeners to vote on their favorite YA novels. 75,220 people voted, helping to whittle the list of 235 finalists down to the top 100. In addition to the list of winners, this page includes links to explanations of what exactly constitutes YA literature. A
The Heroine in the Drawing Room Cynthia Crossen, books columnist for the Wall Street Journal, contemplates the meaning of the phrase domestic fiction, a genre often sneered at: Domestic fiction, like all literary genres, can be bad, and bad in an especially cloying, attenuated and dreary way. I call bad domestic novels Hallmark fiction, and
