The comic novel is not a genre as popular as it once was. This form, generally expressed in the format of a sane narrator slowly unraveling at the slowly-building chaos around them, or responding to a bunch of crazy characters or situations, had its big cultural moment in the middle of the 20th century, and […]
So you’re headed off to college in the fall. Congratulations! It’s going to be both a lot of work and a tremendous karmic shift! You’ll be on your own, and also living in a very small dormitory room with a person who is, in all likelihood, a complete stranger. Regardless, books are both an escape […]
When the nominations for the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel were announced last month, it was a very good day for upstart novelist Joe Hill—his second full-length book, NOS4A2, earned a nomination for the year’s top honor. Also on the ballot: Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep, the mega-selling sequel to The Shining. […]
Tolstoy famously wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” No one knows this better than those who spend an inordinate amount of time writing about dysfunctional families. Everyone has family drama, but while many of us might squabble privately, if anyone attacks the family, we’ll close ranks quicker than the […]
Today the film adaptation of Meg Rosoff’s crazy-good debut novel, How I Live Now, hits theaters. The YA book drops prickly, steel-spined American teen Daisy among cousins she’s never met in the English countryside, including Edmond, with whom she falls in love. But after England is effectively taken hostage by an unnamed country, her coming-of-age story unfolds against a backdrop […]