A Different Look at YA Novels Sonia Patel, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has written three YA novels, argues that “YA fiction needs to expand its boundaries beyond safe, popular stories that only affirm and praise different cultures. It needs to push past the expectation that all diverse teens can conquer adversity in a […]
Commentary on one of my all-time favorite Big Books: The Blind Assassin (2000) is a multilayered and deftly plotted work of autobiographical and historical fiction set in 20th-century Canada. In just the first few pages, layers of family history and mystery unfurl by way of a trifecta of memoir flashback, newspaper clippings and novel-within-a-novel narratives.
On Margaret Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin” Read More »
WHEN MURDER COMES HOME Psychologist J.L. Doucette also writes mystery novels. When a body was found buried in the back yard of a house formerly owned by her grandmother, Doucette began to “question my choice of genre as if by writing about murder I was somehow complicit in bringing violence into the world.” The 50
Here’s my entry in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. Here’s how it works: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to
6 Degrees of Separation: From “A Gentleman in Moscow” to “The Chatham School Affair” Read More »
Feature image by Hermann Schmider from Pixabay Recently my husband and I traveled back to our neighboring hometowns for a family funeral. We’d been back for visits periodically, of course, but we haven’t lived there for 50 years. Each time we visit, I feel a distinct sense of dislocation. The adage “you can’t go home
5 “You Can’t Go Home Again” Novels Read More »
The Edgar Awards Revisited: The Suspect by L. R. Wright (Best Novel; 1986) The Edgar Awards Revisited, a series in Criminal Element, looks back at award winners not only in their own right, as outstanding novels, but as representative of the their time. In fact, looking back on 1986, The Suspect may have been the
How Kurt Vonnegut Predicted the Automation Crisis Player Piano may have been written 67 years ago, but its prescience is uncanny — though not inexplicable. It is a product not only of Vonnegut’s extraordinary imagination, but his years of experience working directly with engineers, whose mentality the novel reflects in reaching its logical conclusion. Getting
Detective novels are, for me, a sort of literary comfort food; a respite from real life — in which problems aren’t always neatly wrapped up — and a chance to walk in the sensibly shod footsteps of a crime-solver . . . , analyzing clues and side-eyeing witnesses and, ultimately, making the world a tiny
A New Newspaper Column on Crime Books Read More »
GOODREADS HACKS: GET A DNF SHELF, MARK REREADS, AND MORE If you find it hard to keep up with all the cool kids who use Goodreads to track their reading, this article will put you in the know about some of the more esoteric aspects. The main subject here is how to create a DNF
Why we need to stop forcing ourselves to finish books we hate When I was younger, I felt that I had to finish every book I started. But some time around my 40th birthday I realized that I had probably completed about half my life and no longer had the luxury of time to waste
