Literature & Psychology

bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

What Your Favorite Books Tell You About Your Writing

My major life activities are reading (usually fiction) and writing (always nonfiction). So I’m delighted when I come across something that combines the two: something like Marcy McKay’s writing challenge What Your Favorite Books Tell You About Your Writing. Marcy runs The Write Practice, a web site and newsletter aimed at fiction writers, but even […]

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Review: “The Girl on the Train,” Paula Hawkins

Hawkins, Paula. The Girl on the Train New York: Penguin Group, 2015 ISBN 978–1–59463–366–9 Rachel rides the same train every day on her commute to and from London, right past the street where she and her husband used to live. She’s still reeling with despair over the failure of her marriage two years earlier. Looking

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Getting Lost in a Good Book

Getting Lost in a Good Book: Scientific Research on Reading Have you ever gotten so absorbed in reading a novel that you lost track of time and of what was happening around you—-even, in fact, that there was a world around you outside of the one you were reading about? Most serious readers have had

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

On Active Reading

Related Post: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF READING: A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY If you watch HBO’s drama The Newsroom, you’ve seen the introductory clip in which an editor scans a printed story by running her hand quickly down the page. While this is an appropriate, even necessary, reading method for keeping up with a daunting amount of news

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“I Am Lazarus,” Anna Kavan

Kavan, Anna. “I Am Lazarus” (1940) In The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time Edited by Mary Louise Aswell Notes and Introduction by Frederic Wertham, M.D. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947 Related Posts: “The World Within”: Introduction “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” Conrad Aiken “THE DOOR,” E.B. WHITE The story’s opening paragraph introduces an

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Ghosts and Other Literary Horrors

  For weeks we’ve been building up to Halloween with lists and tales about the spookiest and scariest stories ever written. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is one of the best known ghost stories in the English language. Part of the reason this novella is so famous is that it leaves unspecified

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Life Stories: A Select Bibliography

  Aftel, Mandy. The Story of Your Life: Becoming the Author of Your Experience (Fireside, 1996) Atkinson, Robert. The Gift of Stories: Practical and Spiritual Applications of Autobiography, Life Stories, and Personal Mythmaking (Bergin and Garvey, 1995) Estrade, Patrick. You Are What You Remember: A Pathbreaking Guide to Understanding and Interpreting Your Childhood Memories (Da

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

“Gone Girl”: Forging a Life Story

  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 * Life Stories: The Personal Component * 11 Novels That Feature Life Stories * Literary Life Stories: The Character Biography * Life Stories: A

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bookshelves: Literature and Psychology

Literary Life Stories: The Character Biography

  Related Posts: Introduction to Life Stories “Before I Go to Sleep,” S.J. Watson: We Are What We Remember Life Stories: The Personal Component 11 Novels That Feature Life Stories Must We Like Fictional Characters? “Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King: The Power of Characters Although the concept of life story originated in the field of

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