Posts by author
Kelly Lynn Thomas
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No Mystery
The books we read in childhood don’t always hold up to our memories of them. Sometimes it’s just a matter of juvenile or bad writing, but other times, it’s the author’s prejudices that turn us off as adults—and classic detective stories…
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The Psychic Sasquatch
Most libraries have limited physical shelf space, so if they want to purchase new books for their collections, often they have to remove some old ones. Two librarians, Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, know this can be a tough pill for…
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Two Bangladeshi Writers Murdered
Two secular journalists in Bangladesh were murdered recently, and these are far from the first incidents: These are only the latest in a recent string of killings of writers and journalists in Bangladesh. In a searing editorial Monday, the Dhaka…
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From Giggles to Gasps
New York comedian Scott Rogowsky created fake book covers that parody popular books and took them on the subway to see how people would react. Titles included Mein Kampf for Kids, Getting Away with Murder for Dummies, and Donald Trump: The Art of…
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Slow Reading
As much as many of us would love to read faster so that we could read more books, science points to speed reading as little more than efficient skimming, partially because the eye has a limited range where it can…
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Knopf’s Hidden Half
For most of Alfred A. Knopf’s 100-plus-year history, Mrs. Knopf’s role in the success of her husband’s company has gone unrecognized. Now, though, she is getting her due: Blanche Knopf probably had better taste than her husband. … It was…
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Books That Aren’t Books
Bookstores around the world have been working to reinvent themselves in the wake of Amazon’s rise, and stocking gift items has been a chief tactic. If you’ve never been to a Waterstone’s in the UK, here’s a sampling of what…
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Poetry as Rock Formation
In an interview at the Huffington Post, poet James Kimbrell compared the act of writing poetry to the slow formation of stalactites out of hollow straws of rock over thousands of years: But what creates that shape and form organically…
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Gay Talese: Inspired By Men
Gay Talese, well-known for being a pioneer of the New Journalism along with writers like Hunter S. Thompson and Truman Capote, apparently couldn’t name any woman writer who’d inspired him when asked at a recent Boston University event. Amy Littlefield, a…
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Public Poetry
I’m interested in Roland Barthes’s idea that mythology is essentially a type of speech, and that speech defines a culture. Poetry can define the dominant languages we have in culture—and now those languages are advertising and the news media. So…
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Writing to Live
Nigerian author Ben Okri reflected on his prize-winning novel, The Famished Road (1991), in the Guardian, saying that he wrote it to find reasons to live. The book, he writes, drew heavily from strange stories his mother told him and his father’s…