However long ago it was that I first came across word of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree, it was right then I determined to read it immediately upon its release (Feb 26, for the curious). With less than a week to go, Shannon has an essay up on Boundless that looks at…
“25 of the Most Exciting Book Releases for 2017” | via Vulture “As the episode progresses, each character gets a chance to wink broadly at the camera. Then the Doyle stories are stuck back into the blender, and the plot hurries on.” | “Not My Sherlock: A Sherlock Holmes Expert On “The Six Thatchers” and…
“Soon, a wide readership formed and her posthumous fame grew, nourished by the stories people passed around. After a gregarious girlhood, it was said, Dickinson had gradually become a near-total recluse, known around Amherst as “the myth.” Children boasted of catching a glimpse of her at an upstairs window. Some thought she was a mystic.…
“Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I’m writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It’s a different aspect of communication. It’s for the people. We always write a certain amount of poetry…
“At the scary, broken heart of each of these three novels stands a woman of tremendous courage. It’s a quality she—each of these three very different “shes”—will need in order to face the horrors bent on destroying her. Also marking each heroine is a possibly fatal flaw that draws the monstrous entities in her direction with…
“The meaning of words, and the way we used them, change all the time — and that’s OK with linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University. He writes about how the English language has evolved in his new book, Words on the Move: Why English Won’t — And Can’t — Sit Still (Like Literally).” | “Our…
“Most of us who embark on a long hike do so seeking change, buoyed by the almost-magical hope that we can walk ourselves into a new body or a new state of mind. But when it actually takes place, the experience of transformation can be unnerving.” | Robert Moor, author of On Trails: An Exploration,…