For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The oracular in Gwen E. Kirby’s Shit Cassandra Saw is tense business—fraught with the dynamics of shared experience, speaking and listening. This collection of short stories reminds me of a woman who used to ride Chicago’s Red Line. You could tell when she was on the train because when it pulled into its next … Read more
[ad_1] Winter is the best time to be a reader–it’s the perfect excuse to stay in, get cozy, and read! Here are some of our favorite wintery picks for your TBR this season (AND the perfect places to read them in!) About the book: You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. … Read more
[ad_1] Among the most ancient and revered forms, which the amorphous siren known as prose may assume, is that of satire, used for millennia to critique, to side-eye and expose, to lay bare the ills of society in narrative or verse. From The Frogs of Aristophanes to Voltaire’s Candide, from James Joyce to Larry David, … Read more
[ad_1] There is an inarguable ephemerality about Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divine Comedy (in Italian, Commedia—the “Divine” was a publisher’s later addition). C.S. Lewis put it well in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966): “There is a curious feeling that [the Commedia] is writing itself, or at most, that the tiny figure … Read more
[ad_1] Well everyone, we’ve made it to the start of another year, though not without some bumps and scrapes along the way. As we round day six-hundred-and-seventy of the pandemic, give or take, it can be easy to lose sight of all the good that’s happened, too. There are still things to celebrate. If you … Read more
[ad_1] Please enjoy what has become a quiet holiday tradition in the Tor.com offices: the reading of Neil Gaiman’s original story: “I, Cthulhu, or, What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9’ S, Longitude 126° 43’ W)?” *** I. Cthulhu, they call me. Great Cthulhu. … Read more
[ad_1] Personally, I’ve already made a plan to forget 2021 ever happened—except when it comes to mystery and thriller reading. In that realm, it’s been a banner year. Of course, I haven’t read everything published, so some crime fiction which has already seen huge success in sales or will soon dominate the awards programs next … Read more
[ad_1] Many of us will never forget those precious moments before lockdown, when we had no idea what was about to hit. We went to the grocery store unmasked, saw friends, went to concerts, went to work. No one yet knows how the story of the pandemic will end, or when. But what if these … Read more
[ad_1] In Persian culture, on the winter solstice, we have a variety of rituals to mark the longest night of the year, one of which is to read poetry. Perhaps it’s no surprise that poetry books are some of my favorites to review, given that cultural DNA. Concurrently, at this time of year in the … Read more
[ad_1] If there’s one thing that was certain about this year, it’s that nothing was certain. And yet, the impulse to make sense of our world and its persistent forms continued. Texts that critically surveyed our world—presented in varied genres and approaches—drew us in to consider—with hope, curiosity, dismay, and startling surprise—all that abounds. From … Read more