Author: Shannon Turlington

• A List of Badass Women

  Today’s reading list is a roundup of badass women–but what does “badass” mean exactly? These are women who don’t conform to the norms that have been set out for women as a whole. They may seem intimidating or–that worst of all literary sins–unlikable. These women follow their own path, make sometimes questionable choices, risk screwing…

  Shannon Turlington

  April 10, 2020

  Notebook, Reading

  Alyson Hagy, Badass women, Books, Carmen Maria Machado, Hallie Butler, Leni Zumas, Madeline Miller, Margaret Atwood, Megan Hunter, Naomi Alderman, Ottessa Moshfegh, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Reading list, Women, Women characters, Women writers

• Now’s a Good Time for a Dystopia

  Today’s reading list features that stalwart genre of anxious times: the dystopia. I’ve tried to collect some newer and more unusual examples for this list, rather than the old standards that you see on every list. Not only are these novels prime escapist fare, but they serve as a helpful reminder that things could always…

  Shannon Turlington

  April 9, 2020

  Notebook, Reading

  Books, Cherie Priest, China Mieville, Claire Vaye Watkins, Dave Eggers, David Mitchell, Dexter Palmer, Dystopia, Hanya Yanagihara, Margaret Atwood, Michel Faber, Paolo Bacigalupi, PD James, Reading list, Science fiction

• 12 Books to Diversify Your Reading

  Sometimes we can get in a reading rut and find it difficult to break out of our comfort zones. But it’s a good idea to shake things up every now and then and read an author or a genre we normally wouldn’t consider, if only for the benefit of expanding our view of the world.…

  Shannon Turlington

  April 8, 2020

  Notebook, Reading

  African American, Alternate history, Books, Brooke Bolander, Chinese American, David Demchuk, Diversity, Elephants, Ellen Klages, Fantastic fiction, Gay and Lesbian, Horror, Hye-Young Pyun, Korean Literature, Lara Elena Donnelly, Margaret Killjoy, Molly Tanzer, Native American, Novellas, Queer, Reading list, Sarah Gailey, Stephen Graham Jones, Tade Thompson, Ukraine, Victor LaValle, Women characters

• Disaster Reading for Disastrous Times

  I’m stuck at home bored, like almost everyone else, so I thought I’d indulge in my favorite pastime and put together some reading lists! I see a lot of lists like this one on Electric Literature and Book Riot — some of them really good, some of them just frankly a hodgepodge of books the…

  Shannon Turlington

  April 7, 2020

  Notebook, Reading

  Alexandra Oliva, Apocalypse, Ariel Djanikian, Ben H Winters, Books, China Mieville, Disasters, Jeff VanderMeer, John Joseph Adams, John Lanchester, John Scalzi, Max Barry, Nathaniel Rich, Reading list

• When I Am Among the Trees

  Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels In difficult times, we turn to poetry. Hear Amanda Palmer reading Mary Oliver’s poem, “When I Am Among the Trees.”

  Shannon Turlington

  March 23, 2020

  Notebook

  Amanda Palmer, Mary Oliver, Poetry, Readaloud, Trees

• What I’ve Been Reading: Books by Women

  Time for an update of what I’ve been reading lately: three recent publications by women writers that are each, in their own way, unusual and engrossing reads. First up: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, her first novel since The Night Circus, which was a favorite of mine. With The Starless Sea, Morgenstern has written a deeply felt and…

  Shannon Turlington

  February 20, 2020

  Reading

  Book Reviews, Books, Circe, Erin Morgenstern, Madeline Miller, Margaret Atwood, Recent reading, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Starless Sea, The Testaments, Women writers

• For Horror Connoisseurs: Paperbacks from Hell

  If you’re a Generation X’er (or older), you may remember that golden age of horror during the 1970s and 1980s, when cheesy paperbacks with titles in red metallic fonts and lurid cover art were all over supermarket and drugstore racks. Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell (2017) is a nostalgia-inducing collection of these covers, as well…

  Shannon Turlington

  January 20, 2020

  Reading

  1970s, 1980s, Bari Wood, Book covers, Elizabeth Engstrom, Horror, Paperbacks from Hell, Small publishers, The Tribe, Valancourt Books, When Darkness Loves Us

• Learn Something: The Psychology of Surprise Endings

  A recent episode of Hidden Brain podcast (NPR), Spoiler Alert! The Psychology of Surprise Endings, was a fascinating dive into why we love plot twists and we actually derive satisfaction from being fooled. It discusses two long-time favorite films, The Sixth Sense and The Unusual Suspects, and gives us insight into the ever-popular unreliable narrator.

  Shannon Turlington

  January 9, 2020

  Learn Something

  Hidden Brain, Plot twists, Psychology, Storytelling, Surprise endings, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Unreliable narrators

• Favorite Books of the 2010s: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

  This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (2013) Burial Rites is based on the true story of Agnes Magnusdottier, the last person to be executed in Iceland, in 1830. The story depicts Agnes’s last weeks when a farming family is forced to take…

  Shannon Turlington

  January 7, 2020

  Best Books of 2010s

  2010s, Burial Rites, Hannah Kent, Historical fiction

• Favorite Books of the 2010s: Quick Takes of 2019 Novels

  This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. These are shorter reviews of good reads published in 2019.  The Institute by Stephen King (2019) Solid King entertainment. True to form, once I was hooked I couldn’t put it down. King gives his characters heart in a way that so…

  Shannon Turlington

  January 6, 2020

  Best Books of 2010s

  2010s, Ben H Winters, Carmen Maria Machado, Dystopia, Golden State, Horror, In the Dream House, Memoir, Stephen King, The Institute