For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] I’ve long marveled at the ways that writers connect themselves to other writers—ones from the past and ones from the present. For more than a decade, Shirley Jackson has been one of those writers for me. And this week, as the movie Shirley opens, based on my 2014 novel about Jackson, I’m marveling all … Read more
[ad_1] “The Artist’s Bookshelf” is a column about books that inspire the CHIRB staff’s favorite artists. A visual artist and tenured professor at Glendale College in Los Angeles County, California, April Bey grew up in the Bahamas–which we can see all through her artwork. Her pieces explore the intersections of American and Bahamian culture, and … Read more
[ad_1] The title of Joyce Carol Oates’ fifty-ninth novel is extracted from Walt Whitman’s “A Clear Midnight,” which ends with: “pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.” These themes, indeed, subsist throughout Oates’s narrative, and one might even say that Oates loves them best, too. They are the pilot light … Read more
[ad_1] Ray Bradbury has written some of the most recognizable and deeply loved stories in literature, from The Martian Chronicles to Fahrenheit 451 and even lesser known (but just as beloved) tales like The Halloween Tree. Bradbury’s influence on both genre writing and literary writing is undeniable. To work beside him, to be mentored by … Read more
[ad_1] My partner Julia owns a 1965 paperback edition of Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast. It lives on our bookshelf in a special section, asleep atop Dickens, Faulkner, and Allan Sichel’s The Penguin Book of Wines. It is creased and cracked, the back hangs on by a quarter-inch of yellowing paper, and a dog’s ear adorns … Read more
[ad_1] This video was filmed in May, before George Floyd’s brutal murder by the police. Watching it is surreal, seeing how we were primarily concerned with the pandemic and now, we’re outraged by the racism that runs rampant through our country and the world. We recognize our privilege in being infuriated by current events instead … Read more
[ad_1] Laurence Ralph is the author of The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence, out now on the University of Chicago Press. Growing up as an African American boy in the suburbs of Baltimore and Atlanta, I got a first-hand introduction to the politics of race and quickly learned that I should be afraid of … Read more
[ad_1] There has been a contemporary movement, stirred by the unease and anxiety that is so prevalent in this stage of late capitalism, of books about women who are unhappily employed, lonely, self-loathing, and–this one’s important–often intoxicated. And Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl definitely fits into that category, joining novels like Halle Butler’s The New … Read more
[ad_1] It’s time to plan your summer reading list and think about where you will be enjoying your new book picks. We all know that readers actually dwell in the pages of their favorite books, but where you read says more about you than the titles you choose. Your reading style is uniquely you and … Read more
[ad_1] More Miracle Than Bird, Alice Miller’s debut novel, joins a spate of stories that imagine relationships between famous male artists and their wives. Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife (2011), Therese Anne Fowler’s Z (2013), and Whitney Sharer’s The Age of Light (2019) – to mention a few – all attempt to give depth and … Read more