Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Seveneves begins with a bang – literally. Neal Stephenson minces no words in the first sentence of his new novel: “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” One minute the...
Author: Mark Flanagan
Lord Fear by Lucas Mann
Luke Mann was 13-years-old when his brother Josh overdosed on heroin. He opens Lord Fear, a memoir of his brother’s life, at Josh’s funeral because, “I once read a Philip Roth novel that begins...
It’s a Long Story: My Life by Willie Nelson and David Ritz
Win a signed copy of Willie Nelson’s autobiography in June’s book giveaway. I grew up with Willie Nelson. My dad moved our family from Poughkeepsie, New York to Austin, Texas in the mid-1970s, when...
What is Poetry?
What do Shakespeare’s sonnets have in common with Emily Dickinson’s lyrical poems? Geoffrey Chaucer’s acrostic poetry with the haiku of Basho? John Keats’ odes with the limericks of Edward Lear? All of it falls...
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
When her father died suddenly, the world stopped making sense to Helen Macdonald. “A kind of madness drifted in,” she recalls. “Time didn’t run forwards any more. It was a solid thing you could...
Dramatic Irony
There are three primary types of irony, of which dramatic irony is one. Situational Irony Situational irony is the most common application of the word “irony.” It is when you expect one thing and...
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki : Turtle Gyre Animation
In Ruth Ozeki’s 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being, a writer named Ruth becomes magically intertwined with a 16-year-old Japanese girl named Naoko when Naoko’s diary washes up on the beach near...
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead by David Shields
★★☆☆☆ Personal memoir and statistical enumeration intertwine in David Shields’ genre-defying reflection upon death. Shields’ (I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, 2015, etc.) unique memoir is a meditation upon life’s brevity and its...
