Iconoclastic Departures: Mary Shelley After Frankenstein : Essays in Honor of the Bicentenary of Mary Shelley's Birth
book-a-rama (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
Lately, people have been defending their favorite genres, especially from the much hated 'fluff' term. I read a lot of different things. Take a look around here. This year especially I've been reading outside my comfort zone. Some might even suggest many of those books fall into the fluffy category but my real love is classics. Yes, I read dead people. Now most of the commenting on these blog posts...
Campaign for the American Reader (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
A panel at the Times (of London) came up with a list of the 100 best books of the decade.Number One on the list:The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)Cormac McCarthy’s gripping, shattering novel walks in a long line of tradition. Mary Shelley tried her hand at the literature of post-apocalypse with The Last Man, published in 1826; Russell Hoban’s 1980 novel, Riddley Walker, sets the aftermath...
BrontëBlog (Free subscription) | 11/08/2009
The Independent reviews the latest book by Juliet Barker Conquest: The English Kingdom of France . The article begins with a reminder of Juliet Barker's previous Brontë work: The books that first brought Juliet Barker renown were moving studies of the Brontës' lives and letters, and an immense life of Wordsworth. Her reinvention as a medievalist with her last book, Agincourt, seemed extraordinary,...
Fluttering Butterflies (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
Well, it's the end of another month. 10 books read this month. It brings my yearly total up to 123 books, and I'm quite proud of that. It was a bit of a struggle at times this month, as I have many, many books started and unfinished and it was also a school holiday for Oldest. I guess my goal for November is to finish some of the books I've already started and to keep up with the reviews. 1. Charlotte's...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
If you're thinking of staying safely indoors this Halloween, writer and vampire expert Kevin Jackson has selected the finest and most frightening bloodsucking stories to curl up with Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire, but instead he became the last living polymath. His expertise ranges from Seneca to the Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food,...
vowel movements (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
Mercy, mean week is almost over. "When younger," said he, "I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents...
The Knight Agency Blog (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Nevermore! Poe, Grimm & Other Spooktacular Reads Sure, I'll spend Halloween putting creepy webbing and skeleton bits throughout the yard. Sure, I'll also spread the cream cheese frosting over my favorite pumpkin cake in preparation for a visit from friends, and we'll bring out the fog machine to add a little something extra for the kids who come to the door, ready to be burdened with the weight...
Nothing Elegant (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
H alloween just wouldn't be the same without our classic tales of horror -- they've become so much a part of our collective concept of Halloween that some would say they are nothing more than tired clichés. But I respectfully disagree! Every time I read one of these works, I find something new and strange, something that taps into fears that we all might secretly harbor deep in our subconscious:...
The Sweetest Cherry in an Apple Pie (Free subscription) | 10/19/2009
Every year I set myself a challenge to read 50 books in one year, and I've never done it before. AND THIS YEAR FINALLY I HAVE YESSS. 1. Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife 2. Markus Zusak - The Book Thief 3 & 4. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor - Red Dwarf and Better than Life 5. Lisa Dalby - Geisha 6. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 7. Amanda Foreman - Georgiana,...
NarcissusWorks (Free subscription) | 10/15/2009
Thanks to Jeff Harrison who acknowledges Ron Silliman for the following link from The Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-caw-sirens-call11-2009oct11,0,7918498.story Mary Shelley and vitalism [galvanism: reanimating human tissue and the life-force], in Richard Holmes study " The Age of Wonder " (Pantheon: 552 pp., $40) in what he defines a couple's collaboration...
FOCUS ON BOOKS (Free subscription) | 10/10/2009
A surprising portrait of Peter Paul Rubens' double life as a secret agent who negotiated a peace between superpowers. Pub. Date: October 2009 Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Format: Hardcover, 368pp ISBN-13: 9780385530842 ISBN: 0385530846 About the book: When two nineteenth-century Oxford students—Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—form...
Divers and Sundry (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
The Vault of Horror offers a top-30 list: 1. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) 2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) 3. "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1845) 4. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (1975) 5. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1931) 6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson (1886) 7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)...
BrontëBlog (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
Two alerts for today, October 8: From Calne, UK: Calne Readers' Group Calne Library The Strand, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 0JU Thursday 8th October 2009, 7.30 If you enjoy reading why not come and join Calne Readers' Group? We meet every 2nd Thursday of the month. The group decides for itself what it wants to read, members contribute suggestions and ideas. The meetings usually last for two hours. Don't...
book-a-rama (Free subscription) | 10/07/2009
Okay, so that's not the best cover ever for such an awesome book but that's what I got. Don't let it fool you into thinking it's got Abbott and Costello running around shouting "Frankie". It's a serious book about science and man's desire to meddle in things he should not. The title refers to not the monster but to the man or maybe the monster is the man. I picked this one up back in the...
The World in the Satin Bag (Free subscription) | 10/06/2009
(This is part of a potential new series of posts. I really want your thoughts on this, particularly constructive criticism. If you hate this, say so. I don't care if you hate it. It's what's on my mind, and if it's leading me in pointless directions, I'd like to know.) When can we say that science fiction has officially crossed the boundary into becoming a legitimate field of study in the eyes of academia...
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