ghost stories

Last Week's Links

Literary Links

PEN America Rejects Calls to Cancel Coney Barrett Book Last week’s Literary Links included an article about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s book advance as well as an article about PEN America’s report on diversity in the publishing industry.  This week we have a link to Publishers Weekly’s news that PEN America has condemned the […]

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stack of 3 books plus open book with pen. Title: Top Ten Tuesday

#TopTenTuesday 8 Suggestions for Spooky Halloween Reading

Today’s assigned topic is Favorite Bookstores OR Bookstores I’d Love to Visit. Once again, this is not a topic I’ve ever thought about. I usually try to visit a local book store whenever I travel, but I’ve never drawn up a bucket list of bookstores to visit. So, in place of a bookstore list, today

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Sympathy for the De Vil: Reading Beyond Likability “As a writer and enthusiastic consumer of unlikable characters, I’m often puzzled by viewers or readers who criticize a story for having these types of characters,” writes novelist and English teacher John Copenhaver. This is a topic that just won’t go away. I Don’t Read to Like

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero’s Journey? Sarah E. Bond and Joel Christensen dispute Joseph Campbell’s well-known theory “which proposed the existence of a singular ‘hero’s journey’ (also known as the Monomyth), as experienced by ancient heroes such as Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey.” How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

Inside the Simon & Schuster Blowup Over Its Mike Pence Book Deal This publishing dust-up just won’t go away. Here the Wall Street Journal takes on the business angle, of companies forced to “address employee demands.” Philip Roth biography, pulled last month, has new publisher And here’s an update on the other publishing story that

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Last Week's Links

Literary Links

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

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covers: Turn of the Screw, The Sun Down Motel, The Lovely Bones, Lady in the Lake, The Better Liar, The Other People, Rebecca

6 Degrees of Separation: Ghosts!

This month we start with The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, an appropriate choice for the Halloween season because it features ghosts. Or does it?  The most salient feature of James’s novella is its ambiguity. Are the ghosts the governess sees real, or are they the product of some psychological projection such as

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Last Week’s Links: Halloween Edition

It’s only the middle of the month, so you’ve got some time to get into the Halloween book/film mood. Here are some suggestions. WOMEN, TRAUMA, AND HAUNTED HOUSES Sarah Smeltzer writes: The haunted house is a staple of the horror genre and it’s easy to see why. Your house should be familiar and it should

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“Lost Boys” by Orson Scott Card

Card, Orson Scott. Lost Boys   New York: HarperCollins, 1992    ISBN 0-06-109131-6   Audiobook by Blackstone Audio Recommended This is the story of the Fletcher family: Step (Stephen) and his pregnant wife, DeAnne, and their children–Stevie, age 8; Robbie, 4; and Elizabeth, 2. It’s 1983, and the family is relocating from Indiana to Steuben,

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