Sheila Heti

Peek Inside Sheila Heti’s ’90s Feminist Zine

Like many teenage girls too smart for their own shorts, Sheila Heti, whose recent novel How Should a Person Be? set the literary world a titter last year, once made zines. We got our hands on an issue of Heti’s own zine, Brillantine, published when the author was 18, which features interviews, cartoons, work by Jenny Holzer, and a call for submissions for a project collecting writing from young women across North America: “We need, as a collective, to promote the art created by young girls. I want it to prove that the shit published in Teen magazines and the sappy stories that win high school English contests are not the best we have to offer. We CAN be political, we CAN be intelligent and edgy and emotional without the requisite angst, etc.” Though the book never made it to print (“They thought it was too risque and probably disgusting;” Heti told Bookforum), you can get a glimpse of the sheer awesomeness of Brillantine, currently on view as part of NYU’s Zan Gibbs Riot Grrrl Zine Collection, after the jump. … Read More

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Readers’ Choice: 10 More Women Who Should Be Writing for ‘Harper’s’

Earlier this week, we bemoaned the lack of women writing for Harper’s, and suggested a few great ones who we think could lend an interesting perspective to the magazine. We also asked you to nominate your own favorite lady writers who you think should be published in the oldest general-interest monthly in America. After the jump, we’ve culled a few of them from your comments on the post and on Twitter. Happy reading! … Read More

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Judging 2012 Book Covers: US vs. UK

While paging through the Guardian‘s gallery of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist earlier this week, we were struck by how different many of the nominees’ covers are from the American ones we know and (sometimes) love. Of course we knew this already, but we were newly inspired to take a look at some of 2012′s best books, and judge them by their covers, both at home and abroad. A disclaimer: your literary editor has little in the way of formal design education, but is instead approaching these as a voracious reader and picker-upper of pretty things in bookstores. … Read More

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10 of the Most Divisive Authors in Recent History

Recently, we stumbled upon an article over at Open Letters Monthly that asked, “Is Cormac McCarthy a Terrible Writer?” The author, Rohan Maitzen, discusses McCarthy’s particular prose style in The Road, which has been celebrated by some and roundly reviled by others. We’ve always been interested in the idea that many of the greatest writers also seem to have the most detractors, so to explore further, we’ve rounded up a few of the most divisive authors in recent… Read More

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The Best Books Flavorpill Staffers Read in 2012

Year-end best-of book lists can be tough. After all, if you’re anything like us, you’re still catching up on the best books of 2010 — or 1910 — and only sneaking a few brand new hardcovers into the mix. So when sitting down to contemplate our collective year in reading, we decided to include everything, not just the new stuff. After the jump, your humble literary editor and a few other Flavorpill staffers expound on the best books we read this year — whether they be books that came out this year, or just the ones we finally (finally!) got around to reading. And inquiring minds want to know, dear readers, what was the best book you read this year? Let us know in the comments. … Read More

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Stereotyping You by Your Favorite Book of 2012

It’s December, and you know what that means: it’s time for everyone — from your mom to your coworkers to every media outlet under the sun — to tell you what their favorite book was this year. There’s no escaping it, but at least you can use the information to totally stereotype whoever’s talking to you (or turn the lens on yourself). Click through to read our (tongue-in-cheek, mind you) breakdown of what your favorite book of the year says about you, and in case you were wondering, our pick is on here too, and hey, we can cop to it. … Read More

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Books That Old White Men Love to Hate

Yesterday, we read a fascinating article on The New Yorker’s Page Turner about impact that former president of France Nicholas Sarkozy’s bizarre hatred of Madame de Lafayette’s 1678 novel The Princess of Clèves, a staple of French cultural heritage and the favorite book of many. Sarkozy publicly bashed and mocked the book, prompting obstinate outrage from his countrymen, and the article goes so far as to suggest that the president’s position on the work was part of the reason he was ousted earlier this year.

But why hate on this book, Sarkozy? Perhaps he was just being crotchety. Which brings us to the topic of the day: books that old white men love to hate. Of course we know there are no books that only men hate (or like, for that matter), and one dissident does not a trend make, but sometimes it’s fun to make assumptions, so please take the following in the spirit that it’s meant. Read on for a few books that have set off the alarms for the white male establishment, and let us know which scary feminist novels we missed in the comments. … Read More

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Contemporary Authors as Adjectives

Today marks the release of George Orwell’s Diaries, the influential writer’s personal writings from the years 1931 to 1949, published for the first time in the United States. Orwell is one of those writers who is so infused in our collective imagination and culture that his name has become its own adjective: “Orwellian” is used to describe a totalitarian government or situation similar to the one in 1984. Like Kafka, whose “Kafkaesque,” has come to mean not only “like Kafka’s writing” but also the more disconnected “marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity,” Orwell’s namesake will probably continue to evolve, becoming a term one understands even without reading a word of his writing. But what about more modern writers? After the jump, we’ve speculated on a few (tongue-in-cheek, mind you) definitions for the adjective-ized versions of contemporary authors — sure, some of their names don’t exactly lend themselves to common adjectival endings, but that’s okay. The English language is ever evolving. And in that spirit, we challenge you to play our game and make up your own in the comments! … Read More

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Bedside Book Snooping: Photos of Our To-Read Piles

Everyone always wants to know what everyone else is reading, in our experience — if only to get some good ideas for ourselves. This month, in lieu of our periodical staff reading list, we decided to take a more visual (and slightly more voyeuristic) route, and asked Flavorpill staffers to snap a photo of their to-read piles — or whatever pile of books happened to be haunting them. Apparently as a group, we enjoy books with Big Important Questions for titles (we found more than one instance of both Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? and the galley of Wilhelm Reich’s Where’s the Truth?), but other than that, we span the spectrum of messy and neat, paperback-crazed and hardcover-happy, with everything from design magazines to biographies to the hot, slim new fiction release sleeping next to our heads. Click through to snoop through the piles of books in a few of your devoted Flavorpill staffers’ bedrooms, and then let us know what you own bedside table looks like in the comments. … Read More

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10 Books to Fill the ‘Girls’-Shaped Hole In Your Life

Last weekend, Lena Dunham’s much talked about HBO show Girls aired its season finale, and though like everyone else, we had our quibbles with the program, we’re finding ourselves more than a little sorry that we don’t have a new episode to look forward to tonight. There’s nothing like it on television, so while we wait for the second season, we thought we’d indulge in a little Girls-esque reading to slake our lust for realistic female friendships, uncomfortable-but-brilliant sex scenes, and bitingly accurate portrayals of semi-lost 20-somethings. Click through to see our recommendations for books to fill the Girls-shaped hole in your life (or just in your Sundays), and if you feel inspired, feel free to add to our list in the comments. … Read More

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