Neil Gaiman is famous for a lot of reasons, but perhaps the number one reason is Sandman, the graphic novel series that won the author nineteen Eisner and six Harvey awards. Now, twenty-five years after publishing the first issue, Gaiman has written a prequel, named Overture.
Sandman is Back
The World According to Junot
"There’s a deep tendency in our society to view mainstream status quo literature as having no politics, which is completely untrue. It has a very strong political value; it just happens to be conservative." Junot Díaz drops some knowledge in an interview with Vox. Pair with his Millions Interview from a few years back.
Harry Potter Before Harry Potter
"The Books of Magic makes The Lord of the Rings, The Avengers, Harry Potter, and even Twilight all look like entries in the same broad genre of tween-superhero fantasy, in which someone insignificant gets mighty powers, fights the forces of evil, and ultimately triumphs. ...The pop culture landscape starts to look like an endless row of Tim Hunters, the same successful formula applied again and again." From The Atlantic, a look at how Neil Gaiman's The Books of Magic prefigured the runaway success of Harry Potter and the modern YA fantasy-adventure craze.
Fences
Growing up in California, our own Michael Bourne didn’t have a full sense of his own privilege until 1981, when a chance encounter with a group of teenagers dressed up as skeletons woke him up to the realities of segregation in America. In a long essay for Orange Coast Review, he goes over the meaning of that incident, complete with meditations on Marin County, his abandoned early novel and his family’s history in Danville, Virginia. Pair with: Michael’s piece for The Millions on Tess Taylor’s The Forage House.
The Golden Ticket
“As a rare book collector and head of the English department at Ayer-Shirley Regional High School, Eleanor Capasso said that being sent what she believes could be a first edition of a Jane Austen novel felt a lot like winning the golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.” Find out more about how a teacher received a two-hundred-year-old copy of Persuasion. If you’re looking for rare books, our guide has got you covered.
For What It’s Worth
Oh, good! Here is a list of what everyone is reading instead of your 10-year peer-reviewed study on bee colony collapse and the near end of human existence.
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The Tortoise and the Tae-Bo Routine
“As they were actual animals, rather than anthropomorphized personality traits intended to teach moral lessons, the Dog’s words were just a bunch of barking. The Goat bolted across the road, ending up on the ridge behind the Baker place. The Goat’s owner then called Animal Control, even though the Dog’s owner knew about the pot plants in the former’s greenhouse, which he had always been cool about, though that may change real soon.” Aesop's lesser fables.
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Graph Lit
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