For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In Burning Roses, S. L. Huang treats a fairy tale as merely the prologue to the rest of a life. We meet Little Red Riding Hood, Rosa, as an older woman already looking back on her life. The famous encounter with the wolf at her grandmother’s house is long behind her—far from the guiltless … Read more
[ad_1] October is one of the best months of the year, usually full of changing leaves, crisp cool nights, planning costumes, trick or treating, and other autumnal and/or spooky activities. While we may need to enjoy some of these in a modified version this year, we certainly don’t want to modify a thing about our … Read more
[ad_1] It’s easy to become caught up in the conventions of realist literary fiction as representative of fiction itself. After all, it’s a reign that has stretched from Balzac to the present day, and the modern strain of American cinematic fiction only reinforces this understanding. But the expanse of work situated in and against realism … Read more
[ad_1] In his new book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, a story centered on the Radiohead album Kid A, music critic Steven Hyden—without meaning to—asks the “Where were you when…” question regarding the album’s release: “I know I bought Kid A the day it came out, as … Read more
[ad_1] Inhospitable attitudes towards women in a gendered-Hollywood; a melancholic Oscar Levant; the allure of cinema in black and white— these are just a few of the thought-provoking aspects in Chicago essayist David Lazar’s new book Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. A writer of three previous books of … Read more
[ad_1] The world doesn’t make sense. All rain has moved indoors, wrecking houses from the inside out while the skies remain cloudless. With ever greater devotion, people worship giant, inert, humanoid bodies as gods as civilization falls apart. Lucy, who has never been religious, has no way to properly mourn her brother after his untimely … Read more
[ad_1] An extraordinary, often mesmerizing engagement with the nature of identity and other existential trappings, The Math Campers, Dan Chiasson’s new collection of poetry, is a meta-kaleidoscope of literature and literary influence. A geometric swirl of the many faces of the author’s family and friends (particularly his teenage sons), it is colored and blended by … Read more
[ad_1] TK The first time I saw her, I remarked on her footwear. “Oh, you’re a red-boot witch,” I said, and shared a brief conspiratorial laugh with a woman I assumed was the mother. The little witch did not join in, however. She looked up at me with a solemn gaze, gray eyes … Read more
[ad_1] In My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, author Resmaa Menakem challenges us to think of white supremacy as “white-body supremacy” because “every white-skinned body, no matter who inhabits it — and no matter what they think, believe, do, or say — automatically benefits from it.” In … Read more
[ad_1] Sixteen years after the publication of her breakout novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s second novel has arrived. The new novel, Piranesi, bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, sharing its unique creative vision and a detailed approach to the fantastic. Though these features appear in a very different time and place, … Read more