The things we remember most in our favorite novels, are the words that trap our attention, secure a place in our minds that is relenting and not easily forgotten. There have been great novels that include great lines, but sometimes a truly remarkable quote, a great monologue, rests firmly in […]
From The LA Times: Big Brother is watching. And people are reading. Thanks to the ongoing National Security Administration surveillance scandal, George Orwell’s “1984” is enjoying a surge in popularity, landing at No. 4 on Amazon’s list of “Movers and Shakers.” Sales of Orwell’s classic have risen an astonishing 5,771% […]
Flavorwire discovered the cure for the frigid winter temperatures when you’ve finished a great book and still aren’t keen to go outside: Literary Board Games. When it’s cold outside, book nerds tend to hibernate with their novels. But what about a bookish activity that’s also social (and indoors)? This week, […]
I have a favorite line, several in fact, that have become a part of my subconscious. Sometimes, I spit them out as advice, so often, in fact, that I forget where I read them. 124 was spiteful. That’s a favorite and it’s Toni Morrison. Like Stephen King, mentioned below, Morrison’s […]
Great fiction is meant to inspire. That may not, perhaps, be the agenda of the novelist at the outset of writing, but when one is discussing topics that seem out of the social norm or that demonstrates the act of subverting common convention, then inspiration is inevitable. Subverting what is […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.