Out with vampires, in with haunted houses: the ghost story is back Just in time for Halloween (or shortly thereafter), here are several new ghost stories: It has been supplanted in recent years by vampires, witches and other monsters, but now the good old-fashioned ghost story is back with a bang, with everyone from debut […]
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She swoons to conquer Batya Ungar-Sargon, who has a Ph.D. in the eighteenth century novel, asks, “Readers of romance fiction enjoy tales of alpha males and forced seduction. Could they still be considered feminists?” In 2013, Americans spent $1.08 billion dollars on romance novels, which represented a whopping 13 per cent of the adult-fiction revenue
Sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson says it’s getting harder and harder to predict the future Neal Stephenson is one of the biggest names in science fiction writing. Here, Drake Baer admits that he was “stoked” to talk to Stephenson and ask him, “What do you think is going to happen to human society in the near
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10 Famous Authors’ Favorite TV Shows In an era when it’s impossible to open a web browser without stumbling across another “Is television the new novel?” piece, we couldn’t help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style, just what our favorite writers watch in their spare time. See what shows the following authors like: Zadie Smith S.E. Hinton
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One of the activities that my daily blogging challenge is cutting heavily into is reading. Since I’m not currently adding many new titles to my lifetime reading list, I’m turning to some other lists for a bit of consolation. I think that for next year I’ll have to define for myself a serious reading challenge.
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Reactions to Harper Lee’s recently published aren’t going away any time soon. Here are some more that I’ve collected. Again, this list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but here I’ve included only those pieces that add something new to the discussion rather than just echoing what has already been said. I offer very short summaries
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What’s Changed, and What Hasn’t, in the Town That Inspired “To Kill a Mockingbird” In a long piece for Smithsonian Magazine, Paul Theroux describes a visit to Monroeville, AL, home of author Harper Lee and inspiration for the fictional Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird: Monroeville is like many towns of its size in Alabama—indeed
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On the eve of the most anticipated publishing event in years — the release of Harper Lee’s novel “Go Set a Watchman” — there is yet another strange twist to the tale of how the book made its way to publication, a development that further clouds the story of serendipitous discovery that generated both excitement
How the Modern Detective Novel Was Born Here Martin Edwards, author of the new book The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, gives a concise history of the development of the modern detective novel. Authors he discusses include the following: Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle,
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Here’s Why Famous Authors Chose Their Fake Names For as long as there have been books, there have been authors disguising themselves behind pseudonyms. Some do it for political reasons, others for personal concerns, and some simply for the joy of mischief. In any case, pseudonyms are a tpower tool for writers, allowing their pens
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