It’s easy to talk about books that are either amazingly good or blatantly bad; we usually have no trouble articulating the points that we either love or loathe. But it’s often hard to find much of anything to say about a book that we think is just so-so, mediocre, ordinary—perhaps the nicest term is unremarkable. […]
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Why is dystopia so appealing to young adults? A dystopia is an imaginary world in which people live dehumanized lives of fear and subjugation; it’s the opposite of utopia. In this piece YA writer Moira Young examines why distopian novels such as Suzanne Collins’s recent Hunger Games trilogy are so popular with young people: Books
Book lovers rake in the reading as publishers release fall titles It’s time to trade in the beach reads for the usually longer and more serious fall reads. The Sacramento Bee‘s Allen Pierleoni lists upcoming new titles, some by big-name authors (think Joan Didion, Lee Child, Stephen King, Alice Hoffman, and Sue Grafton ) in
Nine seems to be this week’s lucky number. Nine Pilgrimages For the Lover of Western Literature A pilgrimage is the focal point around which a journey wraps, not the raison d’etre per se (that is the journey itself) but rather the pulley on the far end of the rope that ratchets you out of your
Literature & Psychology | Scoop.it. Please check out my newest undertaking and let me know what you think.
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Weirdest Writer Deaths “Here are some of the most bizarre ways that writers have had their story end.” Rate This Article: What’s Wrong with the Culture of Critique The Internet-begotten abundance of absolutely everything has given rise to a parallel universe of stars, rankings, most-recommended lists, and other valuations designed to help us sort the
The “reframing” power of literature comes from the story’s not being exactly the same as the reader’s story. In fitting the two together, the reader has to shift his point of view and so moves out of what seemed like an immovable and rigid framework. In this way, reading breeds tolerance and sympathy for people
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Scout, Atticus & Boo – CSMonitor.com: Yvonne Zipp, in Christian Science Monitor, reviews a new book issued to honor the fiftieth anniversary–July 11–of the publication of Harper Lee’s iconic novel To Kill a Mockingbird: “‘Scout, Atticus & Boo’ is a lovely celebration of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ And if, in the end, many of the
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This list includes some of the books mentioned in a previous post as well as others about the psychology of reading. It is intended as a starting point rather than a definitive bibliography on the subject. Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: the Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. New York: Viking, 2009. Print.
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Update May 2025 The original link to Raymond Tallis’s article “The Neuroscience Delusion” no longer works; however, I found a PDF version available online and have updated the link. Also, the link to John Horgan’s Scientific American post “Can Brain Scans Help Us Understand Homer?” no longer works. After an extensive search, I was able
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