Reading Archive
How One Publisher Sparked a Rebirth of Turkey’s Greek History
On the flight back to Istanbul, I hold one of the first books put out by Istos Publishing in my hands. Out of the press’s slim, silver-colored bilingual Greek-Turkish edition of Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Ascetic (Ασκητική-Çileci), the publishing house’s logo pops out in gold, almost holographic. I turn the
Mango and Masala: Food in the Immigrant Novel
The buffet of novels in which food takes center stage is abundant and delicious. As a nonfiction food writer and a dabbler in fiction I find a wide array as I try to research how fiction writers, especially novelists, depict food. Simple preliminary Googling suggests more than fifty such novels.
Booze, Books, and Boys: Literary Friendships Throughout History
Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker Oscar Wilde was the son of Lady Jane, an eclectic socialite who collected artists like trophies. Bram Stoker was a frequent feature in her Saturday night salons, although the two met at a young age and were fast friends through the rest of their
À La Recherche de l’Amérique Perdue: Fantasizing America
To say that the French have a love-hate relationship with the United States is an understatement. We’ll be tssk-tssking Americans for their alleged anti-intellectualism and Puritan mores, while unabashedly dreaming Technicolor dreams of New York and California and happily binging on series. There’s also a strong mainstream appetite for
Planetary Poetry
It’s a comet, no it’s a planet, no it’s not a planet, yes it is. What is it about Pluto that so draws us to it? Is it that Pluto is so far away? Or is it just that we always pull for the underdog? Over the past few
In Bookstores Near You
In 2004, the state of Texas most likely executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, for the murder of his three young children, who died in a fire in their family home. Arson experts later determined the fire was not intentionally set, and the story quickly became enmeshed in
The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Appellations” by Faith Shearin
Juliet famously said of Romeo’s surname, “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” which may be true, but also—as the rest of the Bard’s play argued—problematic. So what is in a name? “Appellations” by Faith Shearin (FRiGG) explores what bearing names can
Writ in Water: Interview with Chris McCormick and “Desert Boys”
Author: Joseph Horton | Categories: Authors, Interviews, Publishing, Reading, Series, Writing, Writing Advice No comments
This month, I chat with author Chris McCormick, whose terrific debut of linked stories, Desert Boys, follows main character Daley “Kush” Kushner and his friends Robert Karinger and Dan Watts. The book is largely set in the growing desert suburbia of the Antelope Valley, 70-odd miles north of Los
What Fiction Means
There isn’t much that will make you more aware of a book’s message, and leerier of it, than reading it aloud to a child. Maybe this explains why I seem to have discovered books with such inordinately terrible messages during the three-plus years I’ve been reading to my daughter.
Writer-In-Chief: As a Man of Letters, Obama Will Be Missed
In the era of the 24-hour news cycle and ubiquitous WiFi, being a good writer would not seem to be much of an asset to a politician. A commanding TV presence and social media savvy are at least as important. It wasn’t always this way, of course. Until the