Is it really so awful for a group of mostly female book-lovers to appreciate not just content, but also form?
Author: Samantha Resnick
In My Book: Knowing when to move on
There is a sad truth that all readers must, at some point, acknowledge: It’s impossible to read everything.
In My Book: The burnout blaze spreads to reading
Book burnout occurs when we let optimization tools such as speed reading bleed into the activity of reading books purely for personal enjoyment.
My lover waits between the sheets: On literary loves
I don’t often read Reddit, but a recent question-turned-confession titled “I think I’ve fallen in love with a fictional character” caught my attention: “I know people get crushes on fictional characters all the time, but this has gone beyond a crush. I’m infatuated with him. … [H]e’s the first thing
Oh God, not another bookmark: The six most awful gifts a reader can get
Reading is not often thought of as a particularly risky passion. Sure, you can argue that it expands your mind to dangerously new heights or that books are addictive. But overall, it’s a safer choice than, let’s say, skydiving, or training poisonous snakes, or recreating “Die Hard” car chase scenes.
The shape-shifting magic of translated literature
It was “One Hundred Years of Solitude” that first made me sign up for Spanish classes in the sixth grade. I hadn’t even read Gabriel García Márquez’s landmark work yet. Really, I had only heard the first line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía
Under the covers: The racial gap in romance
Abs so sculpted they belong in an art museum. Luscious, flowing-with-the-breeze, heartthrob hair. Heaving bosoms in low-cut, lace dresses. I’ve been reading a lot of romance novels recently. Somehow, I’ve managed to get away with writing a senior thesis about them, which means I’ve seen cover after cover with all
Let the brows run wild: A defense of lowbrow literature
Richard Steele, an 18th century Irish writer who always looks like he just ate something sour, wrote: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Well, Richard, sometimes my body doesn’t want to wake up at 6 a.m. to go on a run before my 8 a.m.
Dating and Dostoevsky
Last December, while the Skirball Fire tore through the Los Angeles neighborhood nestled next to my own, I was studying abroad 5,000 miles away in Salamanca, Spain. When my sister texted me asking what she should rescue from my room during the evacuation, I didn’t respond with “my cherished childhood
OPINION — My Sin, My Soul: Controversial Art Kindles Conversation
CW: Sexual assault, abuse It can be hard to love “Lolita.” Vladimir Nabokov’s novel tells the story of middle-aged Humbert’s sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl. The first-person perspective of the novel — which is presented as if Humbert himself is the author — thrusts the reader into the