Lists

The 2018 Millions Gift Guide for Readers and Writers

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Here’s our annual list of suggestions for the readers and writers in your life. We've got all the essentials: books, candy, bobbleheads, and hammocks.
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Lists

No Superheroes Here: Nine Upcoming Book-to-Film Adaptations

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Here’s a look ahead to the summer’s offerings, so if you’re the type of person who prefers to read the book before the movie, you’ll have time to prepare.
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The Millions Interview

You Have to Invent Yourself: An Interview with Jaron Lanier

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It’s a moral imperative to at least state what everybody should do even though it’s so hard. Then we’ll gradually muddle our way toward something better.
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Essays

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution to Read More

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Make a plan in advance: don’t wait for reading time to magically appear, because it never will. Look at your day and see where you can fit it in, and then stick to the plan, as if your book is a person who you’ve agreed to meet—don’t be late, and don’t flake!
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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen

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I feel bad for the new fiction I read this year, because I was always comparing it to Proust, and nothing could really stand up to that epic reading experience.
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Lists

The 2017 Millions Gift Guide for Readers and Writers

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No holiday gift guide is complete without an overpriced candle. This one smells like winter, myrrh, and quiet concentration.
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Essays

Text Me: On New Technology in Fiction

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When writers incorporate new technology into their novels, they run the risk of dating themselves by writing about something that will soon become obsolete. Almost every writer and editor I contacted asked me how long I thought text messages would even be relevant. Would they soon be relics, a particular communication that we used only for a brief period of time?
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Lists

Ten Ways to Organize Your Bookshelf

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Part of the fun of reorganizing your books is considering all your options, so here are 10 organizational strategies for the next time you find yourself in the throes of moving, decluttering, or, if you’re anything like me, procrastinating.
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The Proust Book Club

A Visit to ‘the Desert of After Proust’

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When I first started thinking about this post, I wanted to title it: How Proust Convinced Me to Give Up My Smartphone. But to write that essay, I’d have to give up my phone, and I don’t want to.
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The Proust Book Club

What Marcel Proust Taught Me About Characterization

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Literary characters are like long distance friends. Your perception of them is brief, but intense.
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Screening Room

Women Seen and Heard: A Hollywood Trend Worth Celebrating

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To be a woman in a movie, you’re probably straight, and you’re probably white. You’re probably quite thin with great skin and a large wardrobe. Your living space is probably very clean and well decorated. You’re probably smiling. Or laughing. If you’re crying, you look really beautiful while the tears stream down your face, and men fall in love with you.
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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Hannah Gersen

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The day after the election, in an attempt to find some equilibrium, I returned to In Search of Lost Time. The scene I read happened to be one in which Baron de Charlus misreads a social situation and as a result, loses the person he loves most dearly. His error is a familiar one: he doesn’t observe or even suspect the simmering resentment of someone else.
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Lists

The 2016 Millions Gift Guide for Readers and Writers

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This Irish whiskey, “gently spiced with a burst of ginger and butterscotch,” is perfect for those dark nights of the soul, when the words won’t come, or the rejection notes just won’t stop coming.
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The Proust Book Club

Layered in Sleep with Marcel Proust

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As you might well expect from an invalid, Proust brings a wealth of personal experience to the subject of sleep.
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The Millions Interview

Living in French: The Millions Interviews Lauren Collins

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The better my language skills get, the more I’m aware of, the more I’m able to penetrate. It’s fantastic. It’s been unlocking this secret cave full of riches I could never access before. It’s a midlife gift -- both as a person and as a reporter.
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The Proust Book Club

Proust Book Club: On Reading Recklessly

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In real life, it would be hazardous to take on another person’s point of view so completely, but in reading, you can be reckless.
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The Proust Book Club

Bill Cunningham’s Proustian Eye

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Cunningham often said he was looking for beauty, and he believed that it could be found anywhere. Like the great novelists, he taught us how to see other people, and the world.
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The Proust Book Club

In Which Marcel Proust Anticipates a Minor Mid-Life Crisis at My 15-Year College Reunion

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It wasn’t until midway through lunch on the second day, while nursing a bit of a hangover, that I realized that my vision was compromised.
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