“If Schiff is right to accuse us of nurturing an unrequited infatuation with what amounts to America’s first tabloid scandal, then she’s done the literary equivalent of force us into a cold shower.” The New Republic reviews Stacy Schiff’s new book, The Witches: Salem, 1692.
A Witch Hunt Revisited
Accounting For Taste
Accounting for taste: a Cambridge University psychologist has concluded that people’s aesthetic tastes can be broken down into five “entertainment-preference dimensions.” (via Book Bench)
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Kickstarter: Blessing or Curse?
Is Kickstarter a viable tool for self-published authors, or is it instead “a bit of a nightmare?”
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Introducing Stephen King
It seems slightly incredible that anyone doesn’t know who Stephen King is, but sometimes “it’s precisely those whom we imagine we know, in broad stereotypical terms, who require introductions,” as Joyce Carol Oates put it. Luckily, The Oyster Review has provided a handy reader’s guide to Stephen King, covering his works from Carrie to On Writing.
“The snow falls like heads of cabbage”
Recommended Reading: Short fiction entitled “Unlikely Places” by Kim Chinquee.
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The Teenage Years are More Dystopian Than Ever
Led by Millions Top Tenner The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, dystopia is unseating vampires as the dominant theme in teen fiction, according to The Independent. The paper lists several other examples of the hot new trend, including Plague by Michael Grant and Matched by Ally Condie. (We’d argue that with dystopian classics like 1984 and Lord of the Flies on teen reading lists for decades, this is an old trend that’s new again.)
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Milord, Milady
“Is this the right time to say ‘Zounds, milady’?” A short history of Renaissance Faires.
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“Intellectual Terrorist”
If last year’s The Marriage Plot was too brief a taste of semiotics for you, here’s an interesting essay on Jacques Derrida, “the Samson to tear down the temple of structuralism,” and his seminal 1966 American presentation on “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences.”
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