From The Things They Carried to Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, veteran literary fiction has always been popular, yet women are almost nowhere to be found in war literature. At The New York Times, Cara Hoffman argues that leaving women out of combat literature makes returning from war even more isolating. “They would be made visible if we could read stories that would allow us to understand that women kill in combat and lose friends and long to see their children and partners at home.”
Women at War
Braving the Bestsellers
Canonical literature isn’t the only way to learn about America. The bestseller list can be equally as telling. Matthew Kahn is reading 100 years of No. 1 bestsellers from 1913 to 2013. He blogs about the books and discusses the project in an interview with Salon’s Laura Miller. When Miller asks what makes a bestseller, he claims, “A lot of it is just a matter of accessibility. A focus on plot and character rather than structure and the prose itself.”
●
●
Songs of Experience
More on Maurice Sendak’s last book, My Brother’s Book, and the influence of William Blake.
●
●
“Good evening.”
While you wait around for Hitchcock to hit theaters, you’ve got plenty of time to check out this online record of thirteen storyboards from the English director’s classic films.
●
●
Earthsea Continues
One of Ursula K. Le Guin’s digital-only stories will be published for the first time in a 50th anniversary omnibus edition of The Tales of Earthsea.
●
●
Finding the Fairy Tale Capital
Where is the fairy tale capital of the world? Atlas Obscura investigates. We write about the problem with fairy tales.
●
●