Hearses and Other Distractions
As a child, I was terrified of two things: death and fire. I also grew up in a family that sang “The Hearse Song” at meals. Consequently, while most kids were on the lookout for punch buggies, I was on…
Category: Novels
YA Wednesday: YA Books to Get You Pumped for the Summer Olympics, You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott, Great YA Horror Reads by Women
Between the Zika virus and the latest warnings for Olympic athletes not to put their heads under the water in Brazil because it is full of disgusting stuff I’d rather not talk about here, it feels like the summer Olympics…
Camp Tin House
I never went to summer camp. I always wondered what it was like, that thing that other kids in other places got to do. My mom couldn’t afford it. Instead, my brother and I spent our summers trying to stay…
Friday Feast: Black Lives Matter Reading List, Books about Bangladesh or Bengalis, Novels Set in Iraq, 9 Books To Read If You Find Yourself In Istanbul, and ‘Ice Cream Books’
We are disheartened at the continued violence and tragic loss of lives around the globe. As readers, we travel to these worlds — both near and far, familiar or foreign. We cannot help but feel a sense of community with and compassion…
An Interview with Jennifer Haigh, Author of Heat and Light
Anyone who has followed Jennifer Haigh’s writing career will be unsurprised to learn that her fifth and latest novel, Heat and Light, offers a gripping, cleverly constructed, deeply empathetic account of the shale gas boom’s effect on economically downtrodden Bakerton,…
Friday Feast: When No One Shows Up to Your Reading, Beach Reads, Novels of Exile and Dislocation, Five Down and Dirty Editing Tricks, and Five Stunning Writing Retreats
If you read nothing else in today’s links*, I hope you read Matthew Norman’s account of a reading at Barnes & Noble where no one showed up. Or at least he thought that no one had showed up to his reading until…