b o o k | m a r k s

[wrecked-fuse]

25th entry. practice

Ref - Essence cover

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A Suspense Novelist’s Trail of Deceptions

Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his début thriller, “The Woman in the Window.” His life contains even stranger twists.

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by Tess Crain This past year, I set out to read a hundred books. All had to count, more or less, however subjectively, as “literature.” As I had read fifty-two not without effort the previous year, the goal was to read more, not more quickly; and since my schedule had not changed in any major wa

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George McKelvey My Teenage Fallout Queen

So the song is just dumb but hey, it's a Scopitones

[noelleian-deactivated20190923]

brain: let’s write. I got all kinds of cool shit for you

me: alright! *cracks knuckles* *turns off phone* *sits down* let’s do this

brain: 

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Mary Norris: Greek to Me

The Comma Queen on the pleasures of a different alphabet.

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Why you should surround yourself with more books than you’ll ever have time to read

An overstuffed bookcase (or e-reader) says good things about your mind.

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How A Mongolian Heavy Metal Band Got Millions Of YouTube Views

All it took for The Hu to have an Internet breakthrough was a dramatic video and screaming guitars — plus a horsehead fiddle and throat singing.

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Ling Ma’s “Severance” Captures the Bleak, Fatalistic Mood of 2018

A début novel’s of-the-moment consideration of capitalism, immigration, and zombies.

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Crying At The Playboy Office

I remember it the way a criminal might remember a crime, the where and when more accessible now than the why — the time I cried on the job at Playboy.

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The Elder Statesman of Latin American Literature — and a Writer of Our Moment

Mario Vargas Llosa isn’t a household name among American readers. But at 81, he remains a literary and political colossus across the Spanish-speaking world, and his novels have never felt more relevant.

"Why has García Márquez’s magical realism cemented its place on American bookshelves and syllabuses while Vargas Llosa’s gritty masterpieces are neglected? Vargas Llosa’s best books are harder to read than García Márquez’s. He’s less sentimental, dirtier, raunchier, angrier. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” looks like a Hallmark card next to “Conversation in the Cathedral.” You might be fired for assigning Vargas Llosa in high school English. And Vargas Llosa has published so many novels — 18 in all — that the tours de force can get lost among the mediocrities. His buttoned-up public demeanor hasn’t helped. ...

"Yet Vargas Llosa is the more daring, more democratic writer. While García Márquez cozied up to Fidel Castro and refined a distinctive style, Vargas Llosa reinvented his over and over again while defending free markets and reproductive freedom, gay rights and open elections. His political tracts underscore the value of diversity, of stellar public education, of equal opportunities for the poor. And his novels, whether they are kaleidoscopic histories, political thrillers, generational sagas or slapstick comedies, are remarkable for their ability to inhabit a host of perspectives. He’s especially good at the psychology of collaborators — the people who surround authoritarians and make their administrations function. Such characters were not popular among readers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, who preferred García Márquez’s romantic heroes, but they might feel especially relevant to Americans today."

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A fabulous magazine for modern women of style and purpose.

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NPR's Book Concierge

Visit the #bookconcierge, NPR's guide to 2018's great reads.

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Friends with Secrets

Three friends with different backgrounds participated in online text therapy sessions from January to April 2018. Friends With Secrets captures a slice of their lives — the good, the bad, the heartbreaking — and how they try to process the world around them. The sessions have been refined. The identities of the therapists have been protected.

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Epic Battles, Palaces and Concubines: A Chinese Studio’s Vast World of Fantasy

Hengdian World Studios, in a small town in central China, churns out scores of movies and television series from each period in the country’s history.

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The Land That Failed to Fail

The West was sure the Chinese approach would not work. It just had to wait. It’s still waiting.

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Happy birthday, #TyrusWong.