It’s time for another Classics Club Spin, #22. Here’s how it works: I post a numbered list of 20 titles from my Classics Club list. On December 22 the Classics Club curators will post a number from 1 through 20. I then have to read whatever title has that number on my list by January […]
Classics Club Spin #22 Read More »
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
The Suspect by Fiona Barton Barton, Fiona. The Suspect Penguin Audio, 2019 Narrated by Susan Duerden, Fiona Hardingham, Nicholas Guy Smith, Katharine Lee McEwan ISBN 9781524779962 When two British girls spending their gap year in Thailand disappear, journalist Kate Waters senses a possible big story. Always looking for the latest big scoop,
Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Louise Adams discusses the history of the metaphor of eating as applied to reading. While the historical applications of the metaphor are informative, I’d like to focus on this point: This metaphor, however, hasn’t always seemed so benign. Two hundred years ago, describing someone as
You’ve still got almost a month to hammer away at your reading goal for 2019. Here’s a list of short works (around 200 or fewer pages) that I’ve collected. And below my list you’ll find a list of other lists. Good luck. Read on! As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Can You Ever Forgive
Books You Can Read in One Day or Less Read More »
‘Your throat hurts. Your brain hurts’: the secret life of the audiobook star If you think narrating audiobooks is a dream job because all you have to do is sit there and read, you’d be wrong. Way wrong. Read all about the complex matters of matching specific books with appropriate readers, of preparing, and of
A few of these lists began appearing in early November, but I refuse to start my year-end summaries that early. I haven’t put my Christmas decorations up yet, either. Our Fiction Editor Shares Some Favorites From the Best Books of 2019 From the fiction editor of Kirkus The Best Books of 2019 Amazon’s portal to
Let the Best of 2019 Lists Begin! Read More »
And for your reading pleasure: From Zeus to Williams-Sonoma: The History of the Cornucopia
Happy Thanksgiving (in the U.S.)! Read More »
The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy Melissa Ashley finds the origin of fairytales to “a coterie of 17th century French female writers known as the conteuses, or storytellers.” Fairytales “crystallised as a genre” in this time when women, sometimes as young as 15, were married off—often to
America’s First Banned Book Really Ticked Off the Plymouth Puritans A portrait of Thomas Morton, an English businessman who came to the New World with the Puritans but didn’t share their religious zeal. Morton “had the audacity to erect a maypole in Massachusetts.” The Rise and Fall of Booth Tarkington “How a candidate for the
