My mistress Melancholy Mary Ann Lund, associate professor in Renaissance English literature at the University of Leicester in the UK, discusses Robert Burton (1577-1640) and his The Anatomy of Melancholy, “the most pervasive and elusive of Renaissance diseases.” “One of the great achievements of The Anatomy of Melancholy is to draw together the collective wisdom […]
In honor of International Women’s Day, here are some suggested books about women: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin Woman As Healer by Jeanne Achterberg Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine
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It’s time for another adventure in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. We are given a book to start with, and from there we free associate six books. This month we begin with Lucy Treloar’s Wolfe Island. According to Amazon, this novel is not available in the
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Top 10 books of eco-fiction A blog challenge that I’m working on for next month includes a novel about climate fiction. This challenge made me realize that I haven’t read many works in which this topic figures prominently. I was therefore glad to come across this list by Michael Christie, whose recent novel Greenwood, set
HOME SWEET HO…MAYBE NOT: THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN FICTION So what is it about the haunted house that spans media types? What is it about the concept that transfixes both audience in the land of imagination, and truth seekers in the science world? Why is this one of those subjects that bridges the gap between
Some holiday reading . . . 50 States of Love “From sea to shining sea, here’s a tour of unforgettable fiction that explores matters of the heart.” 125 Books We Love As the New York Public Library celebrates its 125th anniversary, “125 Books We Love honors all the books from the past 125 years that
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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
Thanks to these two bloggers for sponsoring the 2020 Blog Discussion Challenge: Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction Shannon at It Starts at Midnight You can join the discussion challenge at any time during 2020 by clicking on either link above. Which is more important in fiction: plot or character? Novels that engage in complex
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The Subjective Mood Adam O’Fallon Price describes Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie like this: “The novel does not settle for merely telling a story and telling it well; it also on some level considers that story and frames it, in doing so giving the narrative a greater dimensionality, what we might
It’s time for another adventure in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. We are given a book to start with, and from there we free associate six books. This month we begin with a book that topped the critics ‘best of 2019’ lists, Fleishman Is in
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