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Society & Culture |
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Books
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Book reviews, news from the literary world, and a daily blog by the books editor of The Christian Science Monitor.
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Vermeer’s Hat
Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brook takes objects in several Vermeer paintings [a map, a coin, a hat] and uses them as a door to understanding global trading during the early 1600s. The author does an amazing job of bringing in the details of global trading at that time that makes the current global trading more [...]
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What haven’t you read?
This week British newspaper The Telegraph made a 3-minute video of contemporary writers confessing to the books they have never read. Their picks include few surprises (Proust, Joyce, “Midnight’s Children”) but do suggest an astonishingly high level of fakery.
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Elissa’s Odyssey
I just finished reading Elissa’s Odyssey by Erica Verrillo. It’s the second book of the Phoenix Rising Trilogy, a fantasy about a girl who can talk to animals. I found it very enjoyable. The dialogue is smart and funny, the characters memorable, and the plot engaging. What I really like about both books is the [...]
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“How Fiction Works”
In 1858, John Ruskin wrote his “Aspects of Drawing,” a 244-page primer on modern form. Rare among Victorian texts, “Aspects” eschewed grandiose analysis. Instead it stripped art to a series of straight lines, from object (reality) to art (reality translated and then illuminated) – from “technique to the world.”
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What they’re reading in Iran
The Tehran Times ran a piece on Sunday asking booksellers throughout Iran what their customers are buying.
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Society & Culture
