Author: Shannon Turlington
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Rebecca Solnit, fast becoming my new hero
Rebecca Solnit on books no woman should read: “The list made me think there should be another, with some of the same books, called 80 Books No Woman Should Read, though of course I believe everyone should read anything they want. I just think some books are instructions on why women are dirt or hardly…
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Recommended Reading: Going Through the Change
Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel: Samantha is a friend, and this is her first published novel. It is about four menopausal women who gain superpowers, a nice twist on the usual superhero fantasy. I promise if you read the first chapter, it will definitely hook you! This is the first in a planned trilogy.
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Recommended Reading: Welcome to Night Vale
I have never heard the podcast Welcome to Night Vale; I just bought this book based on hearing an interview with the authors on NPR and then seeing it in the bookstore. I really enjoyed the parts about the imaginary town of Night Vale itself and “the voice of Night Vale” sections, which are probably…
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On Pandering: How to Write Like a Man
What an amazing essay by Claire Vaye Watkins. Her novel Gold Fame Citrus is on my “I need to read this soon” list. A taste: Let us embrace a do-it-yourself canon, wherein we each make our own canon filled with what we love to read, what speaks to us and challenges us and opens us up, wherein…
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The Love Story Behind “Carol”
I’ve recently rediscovered Patricia Highsmith, and I read The Price of Salt, her only lesbian novel, this year. This essay about the novel and the new movie coming out based on it (Carol) helped inform my understanding of the book. How Patricia Highsmith turned her erotic obsession with two women into literary art. Source: The Love Story Behind “Carol”…
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Dr. Frankenstein, bad dad…
I just reread Mary Shelley’s gothic horror masterwork, Frankenstein, which inspired more thoughts about her monster, his creator, and the genre Shelley helped shape. Read them here.
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Recommended: Slade House by David Mitchell
A new recommended read: Slade House by David Mitchell. Every nine years on the last Saturday in October, a mysterious iron door appears in the wall of Slade Alley. If you open it–and you should hope you don’t–you’ll find yourself in an impossible garden looking at the back of Slade House, at a place where it absolutely…
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An inside-out fairy tale…
I have been on a Shirley Jackson kick lately. Read my essay about her best novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
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Haunted houses to visit…
I’ve posted a reading list of great haunted house stories on my project blog, Noir Femme. Check it out! And have a haunted Halloween…
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Links for book reviewers…
From Lev Grossman, author and book critic for Time magazine, shares his confessions of a book reviewer, including this terrific insight into the job of a book reviewer: I think of the reviewer’s role now as being more about providing context for a book, tracing its lineage in the tradition and locating it in the literary topography…
Shannon Turlington 