Books Archives - Page 20 of 36

E.M. Forster on the Novel and Why Aristotle Was Wrong About Character

by juliawick February 13, 2015October 19, 2022

The specialty of the novel is that the writer can talk about his characters as well as through them or can arrange for us to listen when they talk to themselves. He has access to self-communings, and from that level he can descend even deeper and peer into the subconscious.

Fiction, Quotes

The Unanswered Question of Race in Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing

by A. N. Devers February 12, 2015December 11, 2025

It is seldom mentioned that Poe came of age in a slave society, in a household where slaves were present. Poe does nothing to draw attention to the fact. An account of the business interests of Poe’s foster father, John Allan, quoted by the biographer Jeffrey Meyers, notes that he and his partner “as a […]

Nonfiction, Quotes

When Two People Decide to Live Together and Combine Their Bookshelves

by mikedang February 5, 2015October 19, 2022

Alexander Chee has a delightful essay in the Morning News about the way we view our personal libraries and what happens to our books when we attempt to combine our bookshelves with our partners.

Nonfiction, Quotes

How an Illness Changed the Way Laura Hillenbrand Wrote Her Bestselling Books

by heymarkarms December 23, 2014October 19, 2022

Your inspirational story of the day is Wil S. Hylton’s New York Times Magazine profile of bestselling author Laura Hillenbrand, who’s written both Seabiscuit and Unbroken while suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. The illness left her unable to leave the house—which, rather than hamper her ability to do research or interview sources, gave her different advantages:

Fiction, Quotes

Mallory Ortberg on the Goofballs of the Western Canon

by heymarkarms October 30, 2014October 19, 2022

I went to the kind of college that really does say, “Here is the Western canon, read it.” Which is definitely not the only thing you want to do with your English major, you definitely want to reach beyond that, but it was pretty traditional in that sense. So I read the Western canon and […]

Fiction, Quotes

Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’: ‘The Longest and Most Charming Love Letter in Literature’

by heymarkarms October 16, 2014October 19, 2022

Orlando has long had a towering, and very much deserved, reputation in the LGBT community; it was published the same year Radclyffe Hall’s controversial The Well of Loneliness, depicting lesbianism as a tragic curse, became a bestseller. Woolf’s creation of a figure who effortlessly changes sex casually upends any notion that biological sex is related […]

Nonfiction, Quotes

Publishing Startup at a Crossroads: ‘Maybe It’s Time to Embrace Something Old-Fashioned’

by heymarkarms October 11, 2014October 19, 2022

The iOS app, pending improvements, still might catch on, but if it doesn’t, we’ll have to figure out how to try to keep those subscribers as we fold them back into the original distribution system. We’re also in talks with an established indie publishing house, trying to figure out whether doing a handful of print […]