Year: 2017
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Title: Sula Author: Toni Morrison How it fulfills the challenge: Toni Morrison is a person of color, and many of her books center on what it is like to be a black woman in America. Sula was nominated for the National Book Award, and her 1987 novel, Beloved, won the Pulitzer prize. Genre: Fiction Quick Description: Morrison’s book is a study…
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Title: Ragnarok Author: A.S. Byatt How it fulfills the challenge: This book is an adaptation of the Norse end of the world myth (Ragnarok) Genre: Fiction (maybe could be considered fantasy? Literary Fantasy…) Quick Description: A detailed and almost poetic interpretation of a Norse myth with amazing imagery and a complex look at good and evil, power and…
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Last month, Ursula Le Guin, author extraordinaire, sent a letter to the Editor of the Oregonian. Someone had just recently published a letter in the newspaper that talked about how politicians using “alternative facts” was no different than science fiction. Le Guin states that the two things could not be more different. Science fiction is,…
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Title: Victory of Eagles Author: Naomi Novik How it fulfills the challenge: This book takes place during the Napoleonic wars, though the battles that are depicted never actually happened. Genre: Fantasy Quick Description: In the 5th book of the Temeraire series, the dragon’s captain, Laurence, has been branded a traitor and Temeraire has been sent to the breeding grounds, no…
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Title: Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” Author: Lena Dunham How it fulfills the challenge: This book doesn’t actually give all that much advice in the traditional sense, but the essays are written in such a way that you discover the career lessons for yourself. Namely, listening to your…
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Hamlette is hosting a Jane Austen week, where lots of bloggers are posting on one of our favorite authors. There are discussions of her books and the various adaptations they’ve spawned in film and further. You can find all of the other posts here! I chose to write about Northanger Abbey, one of the more overlooked…
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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you are feeling the love today. Valentine’s Day has never been a really big deal to me. My fiance and I tend to do little things. He usually picks up flowers for me, usually…
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I’m totally fascinated by (some might say obsessed with) adaptation. If you believe, as I do, that nothing is truly original, then pretty much every cultural product is some form of adaptation or interpretation. I think of it as an extremely creative process: how to make unfamiliar the familiar (fairy tale adaptation); how to bring…
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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature from The Broke and The Bookish. I’m not going to lie–this week’s topic was really difficult for me. There are sometimes books where I wonder what this would have been like with more female characters, or wished a book had a little more resolution or a different ending.…
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Title: Foundation and Empire Author: Isaac Asimov How it fulfills the challenge: Every year our library has two huge book sales put on by the Friends of the Library. I helped run the fall sale, but I went a day early to check out all the books. I ended up with a huge box of books for both…
Allison Burris 