This Week in Indie Bookstores
Indie bookstore news from across the country and around the world!
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Posts Tagged: bookends
A Tale of Two Siblings
For the New York Times’s Bookends column, Thomas Mallon and Leslie Jamison muse on the books that best capture the intricate and fraught relationships between siblings: That’s what I felt Faulkner intuited about siblings: that there were all sorts of gaps and harms and distances that might befall them, that they might inflict on each other, […]
...moreHouses of Joy
Over at the New York Times, Ayana Mathis and Siddhartha Deb consider which subjects are most underrepresented in contemporary literature: joy and struggling for a place to live.
...moreThe Literary Deadly Sins
For the New York Times‘s Bookends column, Rivka Galchen and Benjamin Moser muse on the question of which transgressions in literature are unforgivable: For me, the unforgivable sin in literature is the same as that in life: the assumption of certainty and the moral high ground. That words like “righteous” and “pious” are often used to […]
...moreThe Day Jobs That Influence Our Writing
At the New York Times, writers Francine Prose and Leslie Jamison explain how their past jobs—at a morgue and in kitchens—have taught them about writing: But it was another truth — the humility of that kitchen, confronting what I didn’t know — that has felt most resonant across my writing life. As my work has […]
...moreHow Soon Is Too Soon?
Leslie Jamison and Benjamin Moser tackle a long-debated question for the Bookends column: “Should There Be a Minimum Age for Writing a Memoir?”. They both agree there isn’t—you can read their reasoning over at the New York Times.
...moreThe Lost Art of Reviewing
Book reviewing is still a heavily debated topic within the literary world. This week, the New York Times’s Bookends column has James Parker and Anna Holmes answering the question, “Is book reviewing a public service or an art?”. Head to the Sunday Book Review page to find out what they both agreed on.
...moreLife-Changing Books
In the latest installment of “Bookends” at the New York Times, Leslie Jamison and Francine Prose discuss whether a book could ever change a reader’s life in a negative way. While Jamison thinks that “[n]ovels might not make us worse, but they can unlock parts of us that were already there, already dark, already violent or […]
...moreAn End to Bookends
At Salon, Molly Fischer criticizes the New York Times’s “Bookends” column, going so far as to suggest that the it be eliminated for good. She compares the question-and-answer formats — and the content of the prompts — as reminiscent of high school English classes: It’s not just the stiff phrasing (“What should we make of […]
...moreHighbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow, Nobrow
Critics have been locked in debate over the Internet’s effect on cultural production and reception for as long as most millennials can remember, exclamations like “democratized content” and “death of the novel” appearing at every click and turn. In this week’s New York Times “Bookends” column, two writers discuss whether dated categories are still applicable […]
...moreLearning Curves
Have you ever regretted the way in which you once wrote? In this week’s New York Times “Bookends” column, Anna Holmes and Leslie Jamison take this question on. A few early mistakes, as listed by Holmes: Inserting myself into reported narratives where I didn’t belong. Crafting long, complex sentences that I thought made me sound intelligent […]
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