For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] When journalist Pierce Egan coined “the sweet science” back in 1813 to describe boxing, he probably didn’t realize that he was making the sport catnip to writers for centuries to come. Popularized by A.J. Liebling, who used it as a novel title in 1949, the phrase’s conception of boxing as a craft, requiring both … Read more
[ad_1] There’s something distinctly aspirational about the titles of Lydia Kiesling’s two novels thus far. If judging on that alone, you’d be forgiven for missing their satirical bent. First was The Golden State in 2018, which bears the nickname of its California setting, but whose story of a young mother searching for a haven for … Read more
[ad_1] There is something uniquely intimate about getting to know someone through their voice. To hear a person without seeing them allows our imaginations to flourish. We form an identikit based on an accent or a specific intonation, or how they mispronounce a certain word. We pay attention to how they express themselves and tell … Read more
[ad_1] The posthumous publication of a beloved author can be a dicey proposition. Unless the writer managed to finish the manuscript before she passed, the resulting book is often a work of assemblage and hearsay, incomplete and speculative by nature and thus rarely conventionally satisfying. And if it’s a book that was hidden away in … Read more
[ad_1] Around the time that Donald Trump was elected president in late 2016, a phrase began circulating periodically on my social media feeds: “We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn.” This pithy rejoinder to patriarchal overreach was taken from a 2015 Tish Thawer novel but has since taken on a life of … Read more
[ad_1] It’s a recognizably portentous way to begin a war film: a field of farmers bent over stalks of tomato plants, picking their crop under a blazing sun. Viewers like myself, accustomed to Deer Hunters and Apocalypse Nows, will be primed for these peasants to be mowed down momentarily in a hail of machine gunfire. … Read more
[ad_1] What is there to say at the end of a year like this? I admit my own creative faculties are about worn out, along with most of my other ones. But the holidays are a season for reflection and, if we can manage it, hope for what’s ahead. 2021 was maybe not everything we … Read more
[ad_1] Recently I got coffee with a friend and we fell, as one does these days, to talking about the awkward process of socializing again in the post-pandemic world. “I feel like I’m emerging from a cave with these weird new habits I have to explain,” she said. I compared myself, not entirely ironically, to … Read more
[ad_1] What’s the ideal length of a piece of writing for a film adaptation? Novels would seem to be the most obvious answer, though in recent years their domain has shifted somewhat from the multiplex to prestige television miniseries. Novellas hit the sweet spot with page counts that align roughly with the length of the … Read more
[ad_1] Montana is often called “Big Sky Country,” but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the people inhabiting Deirdre McNamer’s Aviary. Set in an elderly housing facility called Pheasant Run, the novel is a tender and evocative portrait of life in its late stages, when confinement might be physical but the memory can still roam … Read more