Writing

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Betty Smith enchanted a generation of readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ − even as she groused that she hoped Williamsburg would be flattened Rachel Gordan, assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida, discloses that Betty Smith herself had a different experience of life in Brooklyn than does the […]

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

‘God forbid that a dog should die’: when Goodreads reviews go bad “I’m a professional critic, and an author of a literary novel. I’m a snob. I care about my book, and the authors I feel are my competitors,” writes Lauren Oyler. In this piece, another chapter in the continuous Goodreads controversy, she states that

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The Third Person: Writing in the Aftermath of a Home Robbery “Kate Sidley Wrote About Tidy Mysteries in a Faraway Country. Then Real Violence Came Into Her Home.” A couple of weeks ago, Literary Links included Fictionalizing Real Trauma as a Means of Healing. In this article, Kate Sidley, author of cozy mysteries set in

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A stack of 3 closed books, next to an open notebook on which rests a ballpoint pen. Text: Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

When Consciousness Itself is the Protagonist: A Reading List I’ll let River Halen themselves describe the origin of this list of “books that bend reality and the self”: As I was writing my book Dream Rooms, a book about the years that led up to my coming out as trans, I found myself fascinated by

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Too Enjoyable to Be Literature What a wonderful short piece! It’s only four paragraphs long (one of which is a block quotation), but it so aptly expresses a reader’s joy of recognizing and appreciating a literary work.  That literary work is Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And Helen Garner has the same

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

You May Be Surprised by What Scares You “Fear may be a linchpin of horror, but as a recent anthology attests, the true bedrock of the genre is mood.” Stephen Kearse writes, “even in my favorite works of the genre, horror scenarios generally intrigue rather than scare me; I’m more likely to ponder than to

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Why is March 2024 the Best Month in Years For Books? “In Her Debut Column, Maris Kreizman Considers This Spring’s Flood of Great Books” Maris Kreizman describes the kinds of books she, as a critic, likes to cover: The books that move me aren’t the kinds that are written by celebrities; they’re often labors of

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A stack of 3 closed books, next to an open notebook on which rests a ballpoint pen. Text: Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature

It’s Time to Rewrite the Rules of Historical Fiction “Research has long been a backbone of the genre. But beyond the textbooks, there’s a whole world of family stories that have not yet become history. They deserve their place in fiction, too.” Vanessa Chan, author of the well-received recent novel The Storm We Made, writes,

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The winner of a prestigious Japanese literary award has confirmed AI helped write her book | CNN

After author Rie Kudan won one of the country’s most prestigious literary awards, she admitted she had help from an unusual source. Source: The winner of a prestigious Japanese literary award has confirmed AI helped write her book | CNN

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Discussion

What Notes in the Margin Will Be Up to This Year

Instead of laying out an elaborate reading and blogging plan for 2024, I’m going to tell you what I’ll be focusing on.  It seems that, at the end of every year, I look back on whatever reading and writing goals I had set at the beginning of the year and document, in excruciating detail, how

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