Blog Posts by Subject: Literary Genres

I’m going to let you in on a little tip. There’s a book coming out in January 2018 that everyone will be talking about. It’s called The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn.

A review of 5 mystery novels and the films noir that they inspired.

Twenty-five contemporary classics of the sci-fi kind. And remember, if you ever stumble across a time machine: just leave it alone.

Here are ten new and ongoing comic book series to get you excited for this year's convention.

For this post I am only interested in one thing—the cover art; which is the one thing we're not supposed to judge a book by, right? For whatever reason, all of these covers show people from behind.

With the bleakest part of the winter now upon us, some readers may be craving a feast of Scandinavian noir. Here are a few more contemporary Swedes (and one Norwegian) I've enjoyed.

I love a great memoir, and I noticed recently that I tend towards a certain sub-genre of memoirs, those of the mistfit variety. These memoirs are usually brutally honest, self-deprecating, and describe life at the fringes of society, or at least behavior that most of us would be embarrassed, horrified or shocked by. Most are funny and tend to be insightful, and whether it’s a well-known celebrity or someone I’ve never heard of, I find them relatable and refreshing.

Recently I had occasion to spend a lot of time in the Mystery section on the second floor at the Mid-Manhattan Library. After looking at many, many titles there, I noticed a plethora of puns.

Charles Waterton by Charles Willson Peale oil on canvas, 1824 ©National Portrait Gallery, London. Creative Commons BY-NC-NDMost recently discovered, just last week, is Charles Waterton (1782–1865). I've not read enough to evaluate him as a writer (of which all authors tremble in dread), but he certainly led an interesting life. Of a very ancient Catholic family including St. Thomas More and Margaret of Scotland among his ancestors, he became interested in nature in 1804 when he travelled to British 

"Why, we must have been blind all our lives; here were the most wonderful things possible going on under our very noses, but we saw them not." —Walther Besant.

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), though a novelist, is more known as a nature writer. His childhood was spent on a farm in Wiltshire (now a museum), during which he began his observation and awareness of nature and people within it. At the age of 9, he was already an adept at tracking and hunting, and perhaps not surprisingly, left school at the 

I'm a literary Anglophile. There — I've confessed and we can move on. One of their really cool genres is nature writing. They do it in such a quiet and smooth style, as if they've lived in field and woods all their lives. (Dah!)

Perhaps the most famous, or at least the most referred to, is