Better read

I’m home with the dreaded lurgy, so thought it timely to clean up the browser windows & list some of what I’ve been reading lately.

* “These “lost” covers form a parallel universe in which the books we read and love exist in entirely different skins.”
— Kill your darlings: an article on rejected cover art.

* “As Joyce Carol Oates has ruefully noted, “the woman who writes is a writer by her own definition, but a woman writer by others’ definitions”.”
— The female frontier: an article on great women writers of today.

* “A good story is a dirty secret that we all share.”
— Good books don’t have to be hard: an article by Lev Grossman on the value of plot. Make sure to follow it up with the Mumpsimus’ startling exposition of the flaws in Grossman’s article. And then read this excellent examintion of best-seller lists by Nina Siegal:

I decided to retrieve a list of bestselling novels in the United States for the last century to determine whether there has ever been a correlation between what we consider great works of literature and what is considered popular fiction. I also wanted to find out whether something has changed in the way we view literature – and whether people are really fighting for spots on the cultural charts, or whether they’re actually just seeking esteem from their literary peers.

* Iconic Photos: a fascinating blog that tells the stories behind famous photos.

* An article from Tor.com on PTSD in fiction. Which at first seemed an oddly random choice of topic, but makes increasing sense the further into the article I get.

* And finally, a really cheering article on raising/being raised a feminist.