For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The Head and the Heart are an indie rock band who are not one of the subjects of Peter Coviello in his recent collection of essays, Is There God after Prince? Dispatches from an Age of Last Things. The assemblage reads more like a set of collected works than an essay collection with a … Read more
[ad_1] My young adult novel, Wolfpack, wasn’t working and I was struggling to pinpoint why. For previous projects—including my debut and a number of manuscripts destined to live out their days in my desk drawer—there had been obvious issues: a word count closer to a novella that a novel, glaring plot holes, a complete absence … Read more
[ad_1] There’s something special about a novel that feels timeless, somehow older than itself from the moment it’s published. Such is the case with Daniel Gumbiner’s sophomore novel, Fire in the Canyon, which follows the recently reunited Hecht family and their surrounding community of California winemakers through the height of wildfire season. A big part … Read more
[ad_1] I’m hardly the first writer to suffer through some unkind feedback in a workshop—and still, I’m going to talk about it. This happened to me years ago, in grad school. In the short fiction draft I was working on, which I’d brought in for feedback, a young woman recalls an almost laughable unkindness done … Read more
[ad_1] As a journalist on the internet beat, journalist Taylor Lorenz has followed influencers and the social media economy for nearly a decade. In many instances, she has become the story herself, particularly on right-wing social media, and she brings her own first-hand experience to the table in her reporting. For someone like me, who … Read more
[ad_1] A young man, wearing nothing but a flat cap and work boots, reclines on a table, seductively dangling his limbs off the edge while his torso supports a hefty, open book. An older, elegantly suited man leans over the table, though it’s hard to tell whether he’s examining the book or the body underneath, … Read more
[ad_1] The Chicago Review of Books is proud to announce the shortlist for the 2023 Chicago Review of Books (CHIRBy) Awards! Now in its eighth year, the CHIRBy Awards honor the best fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and short essays and stories that feature Chicago and our strong literary community. Eligible titles include works published between September … Read more
[ad_1] Science and technology make for strange gods in Benjamín Labatut’s The MANIAC. Picking up where his sensational When We Cease to Understand the World leaves off, The MANIAC finds Labatut concerned once again about the unruly limits of materialism. This is his first novel written in English and if one wants or expects a … Read more
[ad_1] Roland Barthes, in his lecture course The Preparation of the Novel, was especially interested in the practical, lived dimensions of what it might be like to write something of considerable length. In Kate Briggs’ latest book, The Long Form—taking its title, and an epigraph, from this very same lecture course, which she translated into … Read more
[ad_1] Athena Dixon is lonely. A middle-aged single woman without children or pets, she lives alone and works remotely, more than 350 miles from her family. In The Loneliness Files, a thought-provoking memoir in essays, she explores the many facets of her solitude and what they lead her to understand about herself and the world … Read more