Recommended Reading: Daniel Arnold’s Nervous Breakdown self-interview, which follows an excerpt of his new story collection, Snowblind.
Snowbound
They’re not astronauts; they’re advertisers.
It’s been a full week, which means you’ve had to time to digest the half-season finale of AMC’s Mad Men. But before you dive into the works on our Mad Men Reading List while awaiting the premiere of the next half-season, you should take some time to read Phillip Maciak’s incredible recap and analysis of “Waterloo.”
Feels so good being bad
For the last couple days #badwritingtips, a collection of hilarious writing tips to take your novel from typical to terrible, have been trending on twitter. The Guardian rounded up a few of their favorites. Perhaps this advice will help out the unlucky souls retweeted on working on my novel.
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Fifty Shades of Sociological Commentary
In her new book, Hard-Core Romance, Eva Illouz has published the first serious, book-length academic analysis of the Fifty Shades of Grey. The critically-panned Fifty Shades trilogy, originally a Twilight fan fiction, has sold 32 million copies in the US so far. At The New Republic, William Giraldi seizes the opportunity for a brutal send-up of author E. L. James and the “dreck” she represents. “At least people are reading,” he writes, “You’ve no doubt heard that before. But we don’t say of the diabetic obese, At least people are eating.” Pair with The Millions’ essay on literary predecessors in published fan fiction.
The Shame King
A couple weeks ago, our own Janet Potter reviewed Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, a new book which examines the rise of public shaming on social media. In the Times, Ronson takes part in the paper’s By the Book series, several entries of which we’ve written about before. Among other things, he recommends The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Violence by James Gilligan.
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An Opium Eater, Reconsidered
At The Washington Post, Michael Dirda on the dissolute genius Thomas De Quincey (opium addict, original chronicler of addiction, master of the macabre, prolific C19th essayist).
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Williams on Writing
In an interview with Vice, Joy Williams explains that writing gives her “no happiness”. Pair with an interview with our own Hannah Gersen, who “would have stopped [writing] a long time ago” if she didn’t love it. You could also read Nick Ripatrazone’s recent article on fifty reasons to read Williams.
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“It was a nasty autumn morning…”
A thoughtful piece of fiction to mark the November 10 anniversary of Atatürk‘s death.
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