John Fowles, The Art of Fiction No. 109 This article originally appeared in the Summer 1989 issue of The Paris Review. James R. Baker interviews John Fowles, author of, among others, The Collector (1963) and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). Fowles says that he was heavily influenced by the existentialists. When the interview asks if […]
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Way back in January 2010 Time magazine drew up a list of “the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923—the beginning of TIME”: All-TIME 100 Novels: The parameters: English language novels published anywhere in the world since 1923, the year that TIME Magazine began, which, before you ask, means that Ulysses (1922) doesn’t make the
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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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35 books everyone should read at least once in their lifetime This article arose from a question posed on Reddit: “What is a book that everyone needs to read at least once in their life?” Of the top 35 books listed here from the Reddit responses, I have read the following: Zen and the Art
Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn Original publication date: 1935 rpt. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007 eISBN 978–1–4424–6858–0 Part of the charm of rereading, as an adult, books that I read as a child is understanding and appreciating how I must have reacted to the books back then. I didn’t remember much about Caddie Woodlawn
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Reading With Imagination Novelist Lily Tuck calls fiction a creative act, “an act of the author’s imagination and likewise, ideally, it should be read with imagination.” Here’s how she hopes people will read her work: In my own writing, I have been accused of (or is it praised for?) being a minimalist, which I suppose
It’s time for The Classics Spin #9. For this exercise, Classics Club readers are to make a numbered list of 20 unread books on their original reading list. Then next Monday, April 6, the club will announce a number between 1 and 20, and by May 15 we are to read the book with that number
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I Read Only Books by Women For a Year: Here’s What Happened A constant topic of literary criticism (in both senses of criticism) is that the Western canon is populated by an over-abundance of dead White guys and that we don’t read or even hear about enough authors from the margins of society (e.g., women,
Related Posts: Flow Getting Lost in a Good Book: Scientific Research on Reading Flow and the Reading Process If you’ve ever had the experience of getting lost in a good book, you’ve experienced flow. Csikszentmihalyi’s general characteristics of flow describe this experience. The key to flow is complete absorption in an activity. For readers, the
Being a Better Online Reader Maria Konnikova collects evidence and hypotheses about how the shift from print to online texts has changed the experience of reading. She begins with reference to Maryanne Wolf, whose book Proust and the Squid examines the history of the science and development of the reading brain from antiquity to the
