Buzzfeed Books asked subscribers of their newsletter to tell them about a book that they couldn’t put down. One reader talked about taking her choice to work and pretending to search her purse for something just so she could read another page. That’s unputable downable!
Their list of 53 books is heavily weighted toward the best sellers list, but there are some surprises and reasons given for each are fascinating.
The choices range from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, to Who Asked You? by Terry McMillan, and Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin.
One selection:
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
“I have never been so adamant about finding out what’s going to happen in a book, whilst at the same time feeling so baffled by the path taken to get there. Auster’s interlocking, genre-bending detective stories are something you really just have to dig into to understand. And, as amazing as this book is, it should really come with a warning: “Will ruin all other books for you by making them seem highly ordinary.” ~ Holly
See the other 52 selections HERE
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Dorothy Woodend asks rather plaintively at Alternet
Um, Now Can We Have a Girl’s Coming of Age Film?
and points out in these reawakening movies, it’s always about the boy. (article link below)
So, I read the article and all about the movies it describes. Neither would have induced me to part with money for a ticket, to be honest – it all sounds like SO much “more of the same” – I’ve seen these movies before,
it seems that only in fantasyland (the iconic “Hunger Games”, or my own Worldweavers series..) is the girl allowed the space and the privilege of doing her own growing up.
Contemporary lit of the YA ilk is often focused on the MALE half of the equation, with the girls’ own adventure presented as either as a side plot and an also-ran or simply glossed over altogether in her supporting role for the male metamorphosis.
And they say that boys won’t read NOW? Even though it’s all about them? Well, then, why don’t we simply go ahead and write the girl stories anyway? What is there left to lose? And I’d love to see a proper movie with a young female central character (who is not Katniss Everdeen) coming into her own…
In Dorothy Woodend’s piece, she discusses two of the most recent examples of men-in-crisis film are Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Ben’s At Home.
“One is a Sundance darling…and the other is a low-budget Canadian indie. Superficially, they don’t look the same. One has stars, a showy cinematographer, and a big old budget, while the other was shot in Toronto for apparently five dollars…What they do have in common is the license given to the male lead to suck up all the attention, no matter what is happening around him.”
Read the whole story HERE
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And they tell ME I write books that put my characters through hell..
10 Dark Books for the Literarily Disturbed
If you’re seduced by the deeper, grittier side of literature, check out a list of the most subversive novels in literary fiction, chosen by Feed Your Need to Read. They add, “don’t say we didn’t warn you about these dark books.”
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
Henry Miller’s semi-autobiographical tale of a homeless writer’s bawdy adventures in Paris never shrinks from explicit detail. The mix of offensive language, vignettes, and aggressive social commentary led to the book’s immediate ban. As a judge at Miller’s obscenity trial raved, “It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity.”
9 other dark books HERE
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How the Modern Detective Novel Was Born
In a new book, Martin Edwards traces the detective novel through the decades, and the many forms its taken on the way to its current form.
The roots of the modern detective novel can be traced back to Trent’s Last Case, written by E.C. Bentley, and published in 1913. Bentley intended to write an ironic exposure of detective fiction, but the book’s cleverness and lightness of touch meant that readers took it seriously, and it became a wildly successful best-seller. Above all, it influenced a new generation of writers after the First World War.
Read the whole story HERE
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Blank pages … teenagers reading. Photograph: Cultura Creative (RF)/Alamy
Which books didn’t change your life?
Whether she’s weighing into Amazon or defending fantasy against the slights of literary novelists, Claire Armitstead writes at The Guardian, “Ursula Le Guin is always good value.”
This month on her blog, a request for a list of her top 50 books led to a meditation on the books that had failed to change her.
“What books didn’t influence me?” she writes. “If only someone would ask that! I’ve been waiting for years to answer it. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, I will say, had absolutely no influence on me except to cause hours of incredulous boredom. I thought in all fairness I ought to try The Fountainhead. I gave up on page 10.”
Read the whole article HERE
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THIS n THAT
Teachers Transform Lockers into Book Spines
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Project Seen: A font with an agenda
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Missing comma gets grammar nerd out of parking ticket
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Quote of the Day
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Alma Alexander My books Email me
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