Warning: This column contains spoilers. “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn begins: “When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. And what’s inside it. I think of that too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling
Tag: Books
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.
Metaphors: Salvaging Our Relationships
I’m sitting at a mahogany table; it’s big and round and shrinks the classroom to half its real size. My classmates fill the spaces at the table’s circumference, listening, talking, pondering, ruminating. I have ideas brewing in my mind. But when I come to verbalize them, I fall short of
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
The evolution of what reading means to me
From my early years to around late middle school, I inhabited the role of the quiet, shy, and excruciatingly reserved kid. My life was chiefly internal — I withheld everything tightly into my tiny frame. While I had strong bonds with my friends, and deep extracurricular interests to foster my
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
The in-group: How aliens have become reflections of ourselves
It is the mere possibility of alien existence that enables us to walk into the tight-knit, exclusive hangout down the hall, feeling a little less awkward and flushed than the time before. Let me explain. When I think of the quintessential alien of the science fiction genre, I immediately see
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.
‘The Book of M’: Seeking out others’ shadows
This article contains a mild spoiler. I have come to realize that a lot of great literature plays with figurative shadows. William Shakespeare infringes on his reader’s chaste loyalty in “The Winter’s Tale” by brewing a shadow plot of incest underneath the direct story, while Bronte thought it best
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