Category: Reading

• 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

• 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

• Favorite Time Travel Novels

  Today I started reading An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim, which promises to be an engaging time travel story. And like every good geek, I saw Avengers: Endgame this past weekend, which also plays around with time travel. I enjoy time travel stories because their mind-bending possibilities are so abundant, but it’s difficult to write time travel well. The […]

  Shannon Turlington

  May 1, 2019

  Reading

  Reading list, Science fiction, Time travel

• Around the World in Horror Reading List

  I haven’t posted in a while, so in an effort to get more regular about that, I’m going to share edited and annotated versions of some of the reading lists I curate on LibraryThing. Making reading lists is one of my fave things to do, next to reading itself. I enjoy books with a strong […]

  Shannon Turlington

  April 25, 2019

  Reading

  Around the World, Foreign Horror, Global Horror, Horror, Reading list

• Reading in February

  Time to catch up on recent reads that I can recommend. My first book of February is a brand-new offering from a recent favorite writer of mine, Ben H. Winters. I really admire his niche of combining noir detective stories with speculative scenarios. I’ve read his trilogy set just before a meteor is about to […]

  Shannon Turlington

  March 8, 2019

  Reading

  Ben H Winters, Februrary 2019, Golden State, Hye-Young Pyun, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh, Reading notes, Recommended Reading, Short books, The Hole

• Recent Reading

  I have three short books by women with enticing covers to share with you today. My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: This was a quick read with short chapters, set in Lagos by a Nigerian author, with underlying themes of loyalty to family, abuse, and the shallowness of men who “only want a […]

  Shannon Turlington

  January 19, 2019

  Reading

  Alyson Hagy, Book covers, Essays, Heather Havrilesky, My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Reading notes, Scribe, What if This Were Enough?