Everyone grieves differently. There are no right words to express the feeling of loss, or to tell someone who is bereaving. I have lost people in my life, and while sometimes all you can do is sit and feel your grief, I have found reading to be both helpful and meditative. There are so many philosophical works that offer helpful perceptive and insight. Sometimes, the most important thing is to feel like you’re not alone. Novels, short stories, poetry, and memoirs exploring loss and the process of mourning can be some of the best ways of feeling connected. Here’s a …
Since June, 2011, Street Books has been providing a free library service to the homeless in Portland, Oregon. Using tricycles, founder Laura Moulton and her team of librarians ride through the city with a box of books attached to the trike. Everybody who checks out a book is recorded but not fined if they fail to return the book. The project is about sharing the love of reading and not about generating a profit. At first glance you may be thinking that homeless people probably don’t want books. It’s more likely that they want food or money. But that is not necessarily …
They’re what the Huffington Post calls the “confessional darlings of millennial feminist writing.” Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, Lindy West – love them or hate them – they’ve made waves in their autobiographies and their explicit nod to feminist issues. No one doubts that they have a celebrity following and fit a certain brand of feminism, but whether or not they’re selling the right kind of feminism – and the larger issue of selling it as a brand at all – are questions that aren’t easily answered. In this age of autobiography, the ‘reveal’ is not an exoneration, or the spilling …
Why do you prefer the Beats over the Bloomsburys, prose over poetry, or the book over the movie? More simply why do you like what you like and what makes you like it? Unfortunately, science has just as few answers as we do. Understanding preferences is like trying to read while sprinting on the treadmill. Everything is in a shaky flux, and it’s as difficult to pin down an algorithmic reason as it is to follow the trajectory of a line mid paragraph. The abridged version of why we like what we like is much like the rarely used Facebook …
We’ve discussed what books to pair with your favorite pop stars and other great book and song pairings. For those who love classic rock and literature, you’ll be happy to know that some of the most popular artists of the 20th century wrote and recorded songs that were inspired by their favorite novels. It might shock you just how many. 1984 inspired Bowie and Radiohead Image courtesy of MixMag What do David Bowie and George Orwell have in common? They both wrote something titled “1984” but did you know that Bowie’s song was inspired by Orwell’s novel? It was written …
