Essays
July 27, 2010
Literary Endings: Pretty Bows, Blunt Axes, and Modular Furniture 13
by Sonya Chung
It’s tempting to imagine a linear spectrum of ending “types,” with tied-up-in-a-bow on one end, chopped-off-with-a-blunt-ax on the other. But really, there are so many different kinds of literary endings. What constitutes “satisfying” for different readers?
July 27, 2010
To Teach a Kid How to Read, Teach a Kid How to Think 6
by Kevin Hartnett
If you have not been paying attention to trends in grade school pedagogy over the last couple decades, the first thing you should know is this: The way public school students are taught to understand books looks little like the way most readers of this site probably learned themselves.
July 26, 2010
Orwell and the Tea Party 37
by Darryl Campbell
George Orwell never thought that his work would outlive him by much. After all, he considered himself “a sort of pamphleteer” rather than a genuine novelist. Yet sixty years later, Orwell endures, and I am not sure that this is a good thing.
July 23, 2010
Of Human Limitations 6
by Ujala Sehgal
There was a divide between the books that I wanted to read, and the books that I wanted to want to read. And the latter category won over the former time and time again.
July 22, 2010
Reading in Tongues 3
by J.P. Smith
Where that translator emphasized, or rather extracted and highlighted, the poetic and romantic side of Proust, reading him in French showed just how muscular, how sinewy, Proust’s prose truly is.
July 19, 2010
Evolution of a Reader 16
by Andi Diehn
Perhaps I look to books to protect me from life’s ultimate highs and lows; maybe I am addicted to the parallel highs and lows books have to offer. I see the world through book-colored glasses.
