Over at The Believer, Amy Benfer pens a paean to the serial novels of her youth. “They are the training bras of literature; books that teach young girls how to be older girls before they get there,” Benfer writes.
On Sweet Valley, On Nancy Drew
Analyzing the Scumbag Brain
Jessica Love explores a little of the science behind every weary reader’s nemesis: zoning out.
Sheila Heti Transforms Her Diaries Into Autofiction
Sheila Heti turns her diary entries into an inventive work of autofiction for A New York Times subscriber-only newsletter initiative.
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Hot off the Motherboard: New Issues of OLM, N1BR
Along with the dreaded switch to Daylight Wastings Time, the first of the month brings new issues of Open Letters Monthly and N1BR. Between the two of them, you can find, among other things, reviews of Where the Wild Things Are, J.M. Coetzee‘s Age of Iron, Bob Seger, and the Complete Bloggings of Caleb Crain.
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Mona Awad’s Three Essential Writing Tools
Mona Awad shares the writing process behind her latest novel, All's Well, and her desired conditions for diving into storytelling.
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Jack Kerouac’s Journals
It’s hard to resist reading others’ diary entries, especially when the diaries in question belong to famous writers. Now that a selection of Jack Kerouac‘s journals is being released from The New Yorker archives and made available online, resistance is more or less futile. Originally published in 1998, these journal entries span the years from 1948 to 1950, from just after the long drive that inspired On the Road to the publication of Kerouac’s first book, The Town and the City.
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Sinking (and Swimming) as a Debut Novelist
At The Nervous Breakdown Marie Mutsuki Mockett writes about being uninvited from a reading in New York and other obstacles to promoting her first novel, and how she channeled her creativity to take charge of her own PR.
I wonder what equivalent we boys had to read growing up. What was our training jock strap of literature? The best I can come up with is the Hardy Boys. I don’t think we really had much else in the way of serial young adult novels.