The 50 Greatest Apocalypse Novels “Apropos of . . . Nothing” I’m including this list here because, really, how could I not? How many of these have you read? I’ve read five, and I have two more on the top of my TBR pile. I think that’s pretty good, given that I usually avoid most […]
This month is a wild card: We are to start with the book we’ve ended a previous chain with, and continue from there. I’ve decided to start with the final book from a 6 Degrees of Separation post I did over the summer: Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart. 1. Another novel with a
6 Degrees of Separation: Life Replete with Questions and Drama Read More »
As we prepare to turn the clocks back an hour on Sunday morning, experts in winter depression say the loss of daylight — just as coronavirus infections start to spike again and election tension comes to a head — could make this an unusually difficult stretch. Source: Daylight saving time ends this weekend: Don’t let
Mixing Genres Is All About Messing with Structure “Knowing what people are expecting allows you to subvert the trope. Expectation is its own red herring, built right into your reader.” Stuart Turton, author of the brilliant The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and newly released The Devil and The Dark Water, admits, “I’m obsessed by
Because I was having trouble cranking up much enthusiasm for Halloween this year, here’s a collection of items I’ve collected. I hope you’ll find something here to help you get into this weekend’s holiday spirit. Read What You Need: 9 Gothic Novels for Every Mood This is the one that first inspired me. Did you
The Best Time Travel Books Annalee Newitz is both a science journalist and a science fiction writer who uses science to spur investigations into the nature of human existence. Newitz says science fiction is “less teaching people about how science works, and more about teaching people how history works.” Newitz uses the version of time
Introduction Ever since I started Notes in the Margin back in the late 1990s, I’ve been saying that I don’t like, and therefore don’t read, horror literature, particularly books about vampires, werewolves, and zombies. However, lately I’ve read several articles about horror that have convinced me it might be time for me to re-examine my
Re-Examining My Stance on Horror Read More »
Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times” Thirty years ago Judith Butler published Gender Trouble, a book in which she introduced the notion of gender as performance. The book has since become “a foundational text on any gender studies reading list,” and the question of whether gender is how
I hate the phrase “post-truth era,” but truly we’ve stopped agreeing that there is such a thing as truth and that some things are truthful and some things are facts and it’s not a matter of opinion. Opinion is one thing that’s very different from truth and, unless we all can agree that at least
Quotation: In a “Post-Truth Era” Read More »
One of the reasons why we read is to practice life, to look at particular circumstances and wonder what we’d do if we found ourselves in them. For example, I don’t think I’d ever kidnap a child. But what if someone called me and told me she had kidnapped my daughter, and to get my
It’s Time for Spooky Reading Read More »
