Category: Lists

Ample Book Trivia: 45+ Online Literature Quizzes to Consume Your Day

May 10, 2017

Quizzes are meant to be quick. That’s the general understanding, at least. Maybe because of this, while there’s no shortage of book quizzes to be found on BuzzFeed, Sporcle and the like, many of them feature the same classic literary sediment being stirred up to the surface. Now, there’s nothing wrong with user-created quizzes on … More Ample Book Trivia: 45+ Online Literature Quizzes to Consume Your Day

5 Unexpectedly Beautiful Grave Sites of Famous Russian and Soviet Writers

November 24, 2016

I’m not the kind of person who gives a lot of thought to my own tombstone. Officially, I’d say I prefer to be cremated, but I’m really more of a “dump me in the nearest river” type. At the same time, I don’t particularly think of graves or graveyards as being creepy places. I think … More 5 Unexpectedly Beautiful Grave Sites of Famous Russian and Soviet Writers

3 Garden Path Sentence Headlines for Our Age of Fake News and Questionable Intentions

November 22, 2016

A couple nights ago, I listened to an NPR interviewee talk about Steve Bannon’s two-pronged threat to liberal politics as being a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” approach. References to various pieces of gothic literature, like Frankenstein, had already appeared as political commentary in some online arenas earlier in this year’s election season. When I … More 3 Garden Path Sentence Headlines for Our Age of Fake News and Questionable Intentions

Patricia Highsmith’s Novels: The Best, the Worst and the Weirdly Intriguing

August 25, 2016

Patricia Highsmith is a literary wildcard. Her work may be considered amateurish by book snobs whose primary concern is high art, and too fully-formed for genre fans whose primary concern is entertainment. But I’ve gotten the impression that neither of these phenomena is the norm. Rather, it seems like readers generally love her for having … More Patricia Highsmith’s Novels: The Best, the Worst and the Weirdly Intriguing

5 Reasons Why “Ethan Frome” is 50 Shades of Dreary, Dreary Gray

April 26, 2016

Edith Wharton was a brilliant writer whose work remains relevant today. House of Mirth explored the constraints of economic and social structures in her own branch of New York high society in a believable and intriguing way. However, to tell it like it is, she had a tendency to put her characters through arguably unnecessary shit. … More 5 Reasons Why “Ethan Frome” is 50 Shades of Dreary, Dreary Gray