19 days ago by Jason Boog

Do negative reviews stop people from reading your books? Over at her blog, novelist Shiloh Walker disputed that claim in a passionate essay. Check it out: “That negative review isn’t going to kill your career. Will it stop a few people from buying your book? Possibly–because that book may not be rig ...

GalleyCat - mediabistro.com/galleycat · Rank: 322 · 3566 references

23 days ago by Alexander Davis

There's a great essay on the NYRB blog by Tim Parks about the current emphasis on disparate great writers of the world than on any serious study of context - i.e. the universal over the specific. One of the functions of a canon or a national tradition has been to provide a familiar group of texts, s ...

Anarchy is Hyperbole - agbdavis.com · Rank: 123,170 · 1 reference

25 days ago by Jason Boog

Novelist Jennifer Weiner has made a count of men and women reviewed by the New York Times. Overall, Weiner (pictured, via) found that out of 254 fiction reviews, nearly 60 percent of the featured books written by men. Her long essay also counted authors reviewed multiple times by the newspaper. Foll ...

GalleyCat - mediabistro.com/galleycat · Rank: 322 · 3566 references

28 days ago by turducken

A batch of books on my hold list all came available at once: Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (the second Hunger Games Book), and Among Others by Jo Walton. The first two books are young adult (YA) and the third is about a young adult, although it is ostensibly aimed towards ...

Turducken - theturducken.blogspot.com

37 days ago by Jason Boog

After 30 years at the newspaper, movie critic and author J. Hoberman has been cut at the Village Voice. Most recently, the critic published An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War at New Press. Daily Intel had a quote from Hoberman: “I would be disingenuous to say I hadn’ ...

GalleyCat - mediabistro.com/galleycat · Rank: 322 · 3566 references

48 days ago by turducken

The awkward title of this post refers to the fact that, as usual, this isn't a "best books published this year" list, just a "best stuff I read this year" list. Yeah, I'm behind on my reading, what can I say? Only one of these has a 2011 release date. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Do you ...

Turducken - theturducken.blogspot.com

49 days ago by Gansevoort

From Chasing the White Whale, David Dowling's examination of the MDM: ...the all-night feature of the Moby-Dick Marathon reading functions not as an eccentric solipsistic dare so much as a way to collectively expose the cultural anxiety about the death of literature, the death of reading great works ...

Ahab Beckons - ahab-beckons.blogspot.com · 1 reference

52 days ago by turducken

There is a never-ending conversation in sci-fi circles about gender. A few months ago, it was flaring up again. Charlie Stross had asked his blog readers to name the best novels of the last decade; then in his next post, he asked for the best novels by women. The number of people who said, "I haven' ...

Turducken - theturducken.blogspot.com

53 days ago by turducken

It started when I read two books in a row that I like. One I enjoyed, one I really loved, which is why I'm not going to call them out by name. Both books featured mostly male casts of characters. In one, the only female character was the love interest. (Literally one other woman had any lines; her r ...

Turducken - theturducken.blogspot.com

59 days ago by Alexander Davis

It has been common in many school classrooms for teachers to direct children to look through a story and find the symbols, selecting out colors or objects or expressions that are supposed to have greater meaning. And when it is time for composition, it sometimes occurs that teachers direct children ...

Anarchy is Hyperbole - agbdavis.com · Rank: 123,170 · 1 reference