“While men weren’t looking, women built a genre that tackles love, sex, pleasure, class, money, feminism, masculinity, and equality.” Jamie Green writes for Buzzfeed about how romance novels have gotten more feminist over the years (and still getting a happily ever after) and people are now starting to sit up and take notice.
You’ve Been Sleeping on Romance Novels
Poetic Pugilists
For anyone searching for some weighty longreads about the current state of poetry, look no further than the lively (and longwinded) debate between Matvei Yankelevich and Marjorie Perloff sparked by the latter’s piece, “Poetry on the Brink.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Kunzru, Harrison, Krasznahorkai, Levin, de Botton, Haggadah
It’s a bumper crop of new books this week: Hari Kunzru’s Gods Without Men, Kathryn Harrison’s Enchantements, László Krasznahorkai’s Satantango (reviewed here), and Adam Levin’s Hot Pink. Also out this week are Alain de Botton’s Religion for Athiests and Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander’s New American Haggadah.
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Dystopian (Non)Fictions
Alexandra Alter traces how “a bleak, apocalyptic strain of post-revolutionary literature has taken root” in the Middle East following the Arab Spring.
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Street Smart
Fancy a stroll? Flaneur, a new Berlin-based magazine, profiles one street per issue. It explores the culture, literature, people, and landmarks that make each street unique. The first is Berlin’s Kantstrasse. Pair with: Hyperreal Cartography, a tumblr of “real maps of places that exist but don’t.”
“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”
Does the central, eponymous poem from Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire stand on its own as a literary masterwork?
YA Tackling Racial Injustice
In The Atlantic Adrienne Green reviews the growing number of Young Adult novels tackling racial injustice and how this increase on the topic is no coincidence. “Coming out of the crucible of the past few years—during which young people have been integral to pushing conversations about the unjustified killings of black men to the forefront—the novels capture the many ways that teens of color cope with prejudice, whether through activism or personal accountability or protest.”
Les Cousins Dangereux
Downton Abbey, meet Arrested Development: Arrested Downton. Speaking of the stunningly popular Downton, The Missouri Review is having a “non-contest;” enter by channeling the voice of your favorite author to describe the world of the show. Our own Garth Risk Halberg might be able to help you out, with his essay on Downton‘s literary pedigree.