As we ease our way into the scariest month of the year, it’s time again for us to present our list of the most exciting books due to grace our shelves in the weeks to come. This month, take your pick from October’s virtual smorgasbord of books, and whether your pleasures lie in zombies, genetic anomalies, poetry, God, hell, love triangles or some combination of the above, you’ll find something to like here. Or maybe several somethings — after all, the weather’s getting chilly, and nothing compliments a cup of tea better than a great book. Click through to see our preview of the best bets for great reading this month, and let us know which books you can’t wait to read in the comments.
Everyone loves “strong female characters.” From Jane Eyre to Veronica Mars, they’re so urgently desired and highly praised that they’ve practically become a brand: tough, intelligent women who can probably both beat you in a physical fight and outsmart you in a battle of wits. What’s not to like? But in an essay for last weekend’s New York Times magazine, Carina Chocano says she’s had enough of them. In fact, she argues, these “tough, cold, terse, taciturn” ladies have become so pervasive that we’re now suffering from a dearth of weak female characters — complex, well-written women who happen to also be meek, feminine, neurotic, or otherwise imperfect. Although we’re big fans of strong female characters, we have to admit that some of the most fascinating women in literature, film, and TV would never fit that description. Ten of our favorites are after the jump.
In a recent Daily Beast/Newsweek poll, 44 percent of respondents reported that their personal economic situation currently makes them upset, while close to a third said it makes them downright angry. It’s been about 2 and a half years since the Great Recession began, and there’s a slew of books you can count on to make your situation seem a little bit better if you’re one of the 9.1 percent of Americans who are still unemployed or if you’re a working stiff who can’t seem to get a break. So enjoy this list, dear readers, because a good novel about the economic slowdown can take the pressure off of another grinding week at the office or on the job hunt.
Do you ever think about what your favorite novel would look like if it was published in another country, or even another time? Amazing art blog 50 Watts recently held a contest in which it asked its readers to design the Polish editions of their favorite books, whether contemporary or vintage. Since 50 Watts is chock full of Polish eye candy to begin with, we were confident from the jump that their design-minded denizens would come up with some wonderful stuff. And come up they did! Click through to see the recently announced winners and some of our other favorites from the contest, or get ready to overdose on more imaginedbook covers over at the site.
Playboy playmates generally fit a consistent set of criteria, but the men’s magazine is far more varied when it comes to its featured fiction. With an excerpt of Lydia Davis’ buzzed new translation of Madame Bovary (out this week) advertised on the September issue’s cover as a sample of “the most scandalous novel of all time,” we decided to take a look back at some of Playboy’s most attention-grabbing literary selections.
With summer comes sunshine, idle afternoons, and book lists meant to fill up sunny, idle afternoons with reading. We decided to make a one-stop location — a list of lists, if you will— to help navigate your page-turning adventures this season. Expect a radiant dose of business, politics, education, and pure pleasure to accompany your beach blanket and sunscreen. Leave a comment with a link — or just a few suggestions — if you’ve a summer reading list you’d like to share.
Katie Roiphe’s recent essay in the New York Times entitled “The Naked and the Conflicted” calls out contemporary authors for being prude snugglers, and praises mid-century males for being pervy sex fiends. The article, complete with handy graphs, decries the current generation of literary greats as too obsessed with irony and ambivalence to let its characters (or themselves, she hints somewhat heavily) enjoy sex or their own virility. Citing David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Franzen, and Michael Chabon, among others, she writes:
The younger writers are so self-conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically untoward. For a character to feel himself, even fleetingly, a conquering hero is somehow passé.
It may not be the Nobel Prize, but the competition for this year’s “Bad Sex in Fiction” award is just as stiff (cringe — pun intended). Philip Roth is on the Literary Review’s shortlist, and he’s in good company — current nominees include Amos Oz, Nick Cave, and John Banville, while past candidates include such literary giants as Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, and Tom Wolfe. Now in its 17th year, fiction’s most notorious honor was dreamed up by Auberon Waugh (Evelyn’s son) “with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing, or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels.”
Analyze Words is a new and super useful tool for determining other people’s personalities via their posts on Twitter. Developed by James W. Pennebaker, a University of Texas Professor of Psychology, along with his daughter Teal, Roger Booth and Chris Wilson, the program analyzes tweets based on not the “content words” but rather the “style words” — like articles and prepositions — to determine the mental state of the author.
Basically this means that you can plug in anyone’s Twitter handle — including your own — and watch it ranked in Emotional Style, Social Style and Thinking Style. We’ve been playing with this for hours. After the jump, check out some of our favorite tweet analyses of famous people.
Please excuse our mixed dystopic metaphors, but Edward Champion reports that bookish types are debating whether or not bookstores should be able to request that visiting authors keep their curse words and dirty talk to a minimum. It all started when a Massachusetts store asked Jennifer Weiner, who is currently touring to promote her new novel, Best Friends Forever, to kindly avoid the word “cock” at a signing. Weiner complied, so score one for puritanical New England-ers. Read More »
