Tag: Margaret Atwood
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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…
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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…
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Reading angry women
“I have lived with that anger, on that anger, beneath that anger, on top of that anger … for most of my life.” – Audre Lord “Once upon a time / I had enough anger in me to crack crystal” – Kiki Petrosino “Out of the ash / I rise with my red hair /…
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The Handmaid’s Tale…
Y’all may not have noticed, but I truly love Margaret Atwood. Living The Handmaid’s Tale: a real-life horror story. And, in case you didn’t realize, The Handmaid’s Tale is feminist. Margaret Atwood–high priestess of fiction, yes.
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Recommended Reading: Hag-Seed
Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series, which are retellings of Shakespeare plays set in contemporary times. (Previously, I read The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterston, also in this series.) Atwood takes on one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, The Tempest, locating it in the world of small-time Canadian politics. Felix…
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Negotiating with the dead: Margaret Atwood on what it means to be a writer
The short book, Negotiating with the Dead, is a collection of six lectures Margaret Atwood gave on writing. This is not a typical writing handbook, dispensing now-cliched advice like “write what you know” and “show, don’t tell.” Rather, Atwood tackles the question of what does it mean to “be a writer?” What is the writer, anyway, and…
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Reading journal: January wrap-up
Not full reviews or even necessarily recommendations, just some notes on what I’ve been reading. I will never read all the dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction out there, but I keep trying. This month I read a very early apocalypse story by Jack London: The Scarlet Plague (free to read online). This short story feels like an ur-story…
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Links for readers: Ebooks vs paper redux
“The pile of unread books we have on our bedside tables is often referred to as a graveyard of good intentions. The list of unread books on our Kindles is more of a black hole of fleeting intentions.” — Craig Mod The New York Times says print is far from dead, and Craig Mod asks…
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Margaret Atwood walks around in a state of wonder…
More great stuff from Margaret Atwood! Brain Pickings shares a short animation that accompanies Atwood’s meditation on how technology shapes storytelling. Worth watching.
Shannon Turlington 