Should you feel like a creep reading about transgressive family affairs on the subway?Credit…Librado Romero/The New York Times “My sister. My daughter. … She’s my sister and my daughter!” If you’ve ever seen Roman Polanski’s sun-bleached neo-noir “Chinatown,” which turns 50 this year, you can’t forget it: a defiant, tear-stained Faye Dunaway wailing the sordid […]
People around the world are getting ready for the total solar eclipse next Monday, April 8th. I secured a pair of glasses last month, since the last time there was a solar eclipse in New York, I had to borrow a pair of viewing glasses from some teens in the park, which was an experience […]
In literature, as in real life, complicated mothers and our relationships with them affect us whether they’re in the room or on the page with us or not. I’m interested in books where mothers are not necessarily central characters—some are dead when the story begins, for example—but whose impacts (or absence) are far-reaching. The sort […]
Credit…Rebecca Clarke “I mean that as an organizing principle,” says the U.S. poet laureate, who has edited a new anthology of nature poetry called “You Are Here,” “and also as a slight against prose.” Credit…Rebecca Clarke What books are on your night stand? My night stand doesn’t speak to me anymore. That’s because, here’s the […]
John Barth was a pioneer of literary postmodernism.Credit…Bettmann/Getty Nobody likes the comic who explains his own material, but the writer John Barth, who died on Tuesday, had a way of making explanations — of gags, of stories, of the whole creative enterprise — sing louder and funnier and truer than punchlines. The maxim “Show, don’t […]
Credit…Rebecca Clarke That kids’ classic “completely changed my life,” says the former football star, now the University of Colorado’s “Coach Prime.” His new book is “Elevate and Dominate: 21 Ways to Win On and Off the Field.” Credit…Rebecca Clarke Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). Peace! I need my peace. I usually […]
There has been one single experience that taught me more about storytelling than anything else in my life: telling bedtime stories to my children. Live audiences can be merciless; ask any comedian. Workshopping fiction can be rough, too. But I’d submit that while your own children won’t heckle you or carve up your prose with […]
I met Allie Tanner in November of 2016 at the Brooklyn reading series Franklin Park. The first words she ever said to me were “Are you okay?” (I was. I used to call the raffle at Franklin Park, and felt that microphones were for cowards, so I did not use them.) We’ve been together for […]
Worry by Alexandra Tanner BIG SISTERS ARE bullies. Big sisters have trauma. Big sisters are tired. They’ve been diagnosed with “eldest daughter syndrome” —for which there is no known cure. Are you the eldest daughter of an immigrant household or are you normal? Take it from a certain corner of the internet and big sisters […]
Credit…Michela Buttignol Our columnist reviews saucy new books by Rebecca Ross, Rebekah Weatherspoon and Felicia Grossman. Credit…Michela Buttignol Olivia Waite is the Book Review’s romance fiction columnist. She writes queer historical romance, fantasy and critical essays on the genre’s history and future. March 24, 2024Updated 9:22 a.m. ET Romantasy loves to gild its protagonists with […]
