Do our brains determine how we write? Joyce Dyer explores the possibility that genre is influenced by how our brains are wired but wonders if that limits us. “The page may be forcing compromises that the brain, in such close relationship with the mind, must rightly refuse,” she writes.
Where Is My Mind?
Charlotte Brontë’s Voice
While writing about Charlotte Brontë’s voice, Bee Wilson pays special attention to the ways the Jane Eyre author “makes a gothic fairy tale about a plain governess so raw and exhilarating.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hannaham; Torday; Essbaum; Horack; Rubin; Landau; Hewitt
Out this week: Delicious Foods by James Hannaham; The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday; Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum; The Other Joseph by Skip Horack; The Poser by Jacob Rubin; The Empire of the Senses by Alexis Landau; and The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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How the Nobel Odds Are Made
Ladbrokes, the popular bookmaker, has correctly predicted the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature with “a 50 percent accuracy rate” over the past eight years. This remarkable record is noteworthy because the oddsmakers do not actually read any of the books, and they do not go about “forming an opinion about the relative merits of each author.” Instead, the folks responsible for each year’s odds “appl[y] a numerical value to things like industry chatter, an author’s nationality, historical precedent.” So, that in mind, how confident do you feel about Haruki Murakami’s chances?
Tolstoy, More Than a Century Later
The Atlantic opens up its archives and stumbles across a November, 1891 profile of Leo Tolstoy that foreshadows his death.
V. I. G.
A V.I.G. (very important garment) will be making its way to the U.S. this August. Pride and Prejudice fans can now see the shirt Colin Firth wore as Mr. Darcy in the exhibition “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity.” We rewrote the title of Pride and Prejudice and other books as clickbait. You should definitely read it.
2018 Tournament of Books Winner Announced
After 16 fierce book brackets, The Morning News’ Tournament of Books championship round pitted Samanta Schweblin‘s Fever Dream against George Saunders‘ Lincoln in the Bardo. Did your pick win? Click here to find out.