It’s October and we’re settling into the school year, so it’s the perfect time to shake up required reading lists. I love the classics, but I’ve also got some reimaginings of these favorites to jump-start your Socratic seminar. These take you beyond John Gardner’s Grendel and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea—which are already required reading anyway, right? […]
Lord Byron—the Rapscallion of Romanticism, the Hunk of Heptameter, the Cad of the Cantos (sorry)—was born 288 years ago on this day. We can celebrate him by writing a classic satirical poem, becoming a new kind of celebrity, or starting an affair with a deeply unstable married person and / or one of our […]
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending a theatrical in honor of Miss Jane Austen’s 242nd year of birth. In loft on Chicago’s Broadway Street, a troupe of women paid their respects to Miss Austen—exemplary authoress of the Regency era—by fabricating a satirical, gently mocking tale of social mores and romance. . . all […]
In the world of popular intellectual property, nothing is left to waste. Whether it’s new stories in the same universe (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) or the continuation of a dead author’s series (Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn, by Ace Atkins), characters and settings are often cannibalized for a commercial motive. Then there are authors who […]
There’s no denying that it’s certainly been the Year of Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s groundbreaking musical surprised no one when it won the Tony Award for Best Musical in June, and swept 10 other categories besides. (For an excellent behind-the-scenes account, check out this audiobook.) Hamilton is a singular sensation to be sure, but Broadway’s been bursting […]
Here’s some news you might have missed last month: the New York Times and Variety reported that Merchant Ivory’s independent films have been acquired by the Cohen Media Group, who intend to restore the films and re-release them in theaters. Be prepared to see theatrical re-releases of classics like Howard’s End and other films dear to the […]
Is it just too bad a pun to say that the literary world is ablaze with buzz about Garth Risk Hallberg’s stunning debut City on Fire? This immense (944 pages) tale of 1970s New York is heating up the charts. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The holds list might move a little slowly as readers embrace such a lengthy […]
Elizabeth Taylor the writer has often been overlooked, an unfair side effect of having the same name as a very famous actress. But “The Other Elizabeth Taylor” (which just so happens to be the title of Nicola Beauman’s biography of the writer) deserves to be discovered in her own right and this collection of short stories […]
Books are dead. Long live books! There’s been more hand-wringing over the state of the written word this fall than perhaps since the time of the Greek philosophers, who despaired that the newfangled technology of writing would lead to book-lovin’ youth isolating themselves to devour the written word. This would result in loss of memory […]
David Shields’ biography, Salinger, is slated to be one of the hot books this September. If you’re already pushing classics with a back to school display, do some cross-over promotion with these 1950s stand-outs. A Death in the Family by James Agee The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren Go Tell It on the […]