I’m Not Feeling Good at All “The perplexingly alienated women of recent American fiction” Jess Bergman writes, “the new heroines of contemporary fiction possess a kind of anhedonic equanimity, more numb than overwhelmed.” Doing No Harm: A Look at Writing Suicide and Self-Harm in Fiction Alice Nuttall makes the case that “Suicide and self-harm are […]
B&N, BAM Remain Open Publishers Weekly reports that Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million are currently staying open. I would imagine, though, that this situation could change at any time, so you’d probably want to check with your local store. A dystopian reading list: books to enjoy while in quarantine The U.K.’s Guardian advises that, in
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“What Do I Know To Be True?”: Emma Copley Eisenberg on Truth in Nonfiction, Writing Trauma, and The Dead Girl Newsroom Jacqueline Alnes talks with Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of true-crime book The Third Rainbow Girl, “about what it means to seek truth in nonfiction, and how writing the personal can allow for more complicated
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 literary world lost many in 2019, including those listed here (with date of death and link to obituary, where available. Francine du Plessix Gray, 1/13 Mary Oliver, 1/17 Russell Baker, 1/21 Diana Athill, 1/23 Jan Wahl, 1/29 Edith Iglauer, 2/13 Andrea Levy, 2/14 Gillian Freeman, 2/23 Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, 3/12 W.S. Merwin, 3/15 Jonathan
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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
Learning to Write Mysteries the Mystic River Way Angie Kim’s recently published debut novel Miracle Creek is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Dennis Lehane’s 2001 book Mystic River is a novel I still remember well even after all these years. Coming across this article, in which Angie Kim explains
Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers Joe Pinsker looks at the question of “why some people grow up to derive great pleasure from reading, while others don’t.” Here’s no surprise: “a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it.” How Reese Witherspoon
A Love Letter to the Girls Who Die First in Horror Films When I recently read Riley Sager’s novel Final Girls, I didn’t realize that the final girl, the last girl left standing, is a standard trope of slasher movies. In this article Lindsay King-Miller talks about “a film’s Final Girl, a term coined by
