NaNoWriMo may be over and our schedules may be filling up with holiday parties and family visits, but despite all that, December is one of our favorite months to curl up and read. If you need a little extra inspiration in this most hectic of months, however, never fear. To spur you on, we’ve collected a few inspiring quotes about reading by some people who read quite a lot — the authors themselves. Click through to read forty of our favorite quotes from writers about books and reading, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorite inspirational declarations in the comments! Read More »
There’s nothing like a well-stocked library to enhance a home. Especially when that library has been outfitted with books chosen by some of the choosiest readers of all — the authors themselves. We recently caught a peek at the literary collections of a few contemporary novelists in Leah Price’s excellent and newly released Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, but we admit that our library-lust wasn’t quite sated, and we had to go hunting for more. We’ve already shown you a choice selection of the libraries of the rich and famous, but here, inspired by Price’s book, we’re focusing on the libraries, studies, and carefully organized bookshelves of the authors themselves. Click through to see a few snapshots of the libraries of famous authors, and let us know which ones inspire you to curl up and read in the comments. Read More »
If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: the spunky heroine of the His Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra Belacqua.
Read More »
Yesterday in The New York Times Book Review, David Orr wrote, “Fantasy of any kind tells us that the world we know is not the only one, nor the most enduring — and that truth can be anything but an escape or comfort.” And yet, magical realism and fantasy have been creeping into our book lists with ever-increasing frequency. For this reason, we asked Lev Grossman to curate a group of his favorite fantasy novels. Grossman is the author of The Magicians and Codex, and is the book critic for TIME magazine. He has also written for The New York Times, The Believer, The Village Voice, Salon, and Wired, among other publications, and his latest novel, The Magician King, is out now.
Read More »
Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the brilliant fashion bloggers from Go Fug Yourself, just published a new young adult novel called Spoiled, which features a teenage girl named Molly Dix who moves from Indiana to sunny LA when she reunites with her celebrity dad. The book is hopefully the first of many from the duo, and is definitely worth picking up on your way to the beach. With this in mind, we’ve come up with a list of 10 contemporary YA series that you can read in transit or under a large umbrella without breaking a mental sweat. Dostoevsky they ain’t — but isn’t that point of summer reading?
Read More »
A list of 13 authors from 8 different countries who were nominated for the Man Booker International Prize — which is awarded “to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage” — was released yesterday. The winner will receive an award of £60,000 (approximately $85,000) as well as the ability to refer to him or herself in the third person as a “notable” author. Next month, the MBIP panel will winnow it down to a single winner, who will be announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, with an awards ceremony taking place on June 28th in London. Since the prize is awarded every two years, the last prize winner was the unflappable short story writer Alice Munro in 2009.
Read More »
What is the deal with our culture’s preoccupation – literary and otherwise – with kid geniuses? Is it that we all secretly wish we were still children – but with our adult intellect intact? Is it that we think a child with remarkable abilities but with age-appropriate innocence is our last best hope? Will the strange pleasure we get from the wise child (Kids Say the Darndest Things, anyone?) trope never run dry? Garth Risk Hallberg’s lovely piece over at the Millions, Adam Levin’s The Instructions and the Cult of the Child, has gotten us thinking a little more about precocious children, specifically in that mirror of society, English Literature. Click through for our thoughts and our list of some of our favorite literary child geniuses.
Read More »
One of our favorite gentlemanly blogs, The Art of Manliness, recently posted a list of their picks for the 50 best books for boys (specifically for ages 9 to 12, but really for boys of all ages). We liked it, but then we thought — what about the girls? Are we going to let our young girls be relegated to Mormon propaganda like Twilight and stories about simpering princesses?
We think not! Here are our top ten choices of books for girls and young women — we have some overlap with TAOM’s list (because why should girls only read books about girls?) but we’ve also picked out some spectacular novels particularly for the young ladies. Our claim: boys will like them too. Let us know what we’ve missed — we limited ourselves to ten and we know there are lots more out there — and tell us about your personal childhood favorites.
Read More »
