Book clubs with names such as “Read Women” have been growing in Brazilian cities, pushing for including more work by women authors in publishers’ lists, bookstores’ inventory, and even school curricula. Now those writers and their supporters worry about whether the new president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his far-right followers will undo the progress of recent years. — Public Radio International
Category: words
Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hunting Of The Snark’: Nonsense Poem? Or Meditation On The Nature Of Reality?
Lit scholar Nina Lyon makes the case that it’s both: Carroll was, by profession, a mathematical logician, and he saw the corner into which the field of logic and metaphysics was backing itself during his lifetime. — Aeon
Using Dungeons And Dragons To Teach High Schoolers English Lit
“Instead of assigning the same old essays about Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, [Sarah Roman] wove classroom assignments into an epic adventure for her students to play their way through. By the end of the semester, Roman said her students remembered more about the lessons and had developed relationships with the texts that they wouldn’t have gotten from a standard assignment. — WNYC (New York City)
Does “Catcher In The Rye” Still Resonate All These Years Later?
“The Catcher in the Rye” was not originally marketed as a book for teens, but they responded to it as their anthem: More than 65 million copies have been sold. I suspect, though, that the novel wouldn’t be such a phenomenon if it debuted today. – Washington Post
To Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, The Merchant-Ivory Screenplays Were A Hobby
Notwithstanding the fact that she won Oscars for two of her scripts (A Room with a View and Howards End) for the filmmaking couple, she considered herself primarily a prose writer. Historian Maya Jasanoff offers a survey of her work, which she characterizes as a blend of Jane Austen and V.S. Naipaul. — The New Yorker
Here’s A Never-Before-Published Short Story By Sylvia Plath
“Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom” is a piece Plath wrote when she was 20 and submitted to Mademoiselle magazine, which rejected it (too dark!). Faber, which is publishing it in January, lets us have an advance look. — The Guardian
There’s A Lot Of History Going On In Zines, And Zine Libraries Highlight Marginalized Voices
Fifteen years ago, Jenna Freedman “established the zine library at Manhattan’s Barnard College, where she is still zine librarian. Today, the collection consists of over 10,000 zines and focuses heavily on material created by marginalized communities, with topics as varied as mothers and daughters documenting holidays together to searing political collections about racism in punk rock.” – BuzzFeed
Fire Up That To Be Read Pile For Lit Hub’s ‘Most Anticipated Books Of 2019’
That’s right, it’s almost 2019. And just in case you’re panicking about all of the books you didn’t get to in 2018, well, add a stack to the teetering pile (or add some gigabytes to your phone). – Literary Hub
What Happens If You Log Off Social Media And Just Read?
This is going to surprise everyone: When people get off Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Slack, and more, they get a lot of books read. However! “My only real distractions were hunger and cold. My heat came from a small wood-burning stove, and keeping the tiny house at the right temperature, it turned out, required the same kind of constant low-level attention as my Twitter feed.” – The Guardian (UK)
Watch Out, Pinterest: Khalil Gibran’s ‘The Prophet’ Is About To Enter Public Domain
The Prophet, and a lot of other work, is public domain on January 1. Sure, the estates are going to lose money. (But honestly, who cares? This is great for readers.) – The New York Times