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For many years I have appreciated and enjoyed the Vision series – a sequence of biographical novels about the lives of the saints and Catholic heroes written especially for younger readers. The series commenced in the hoary antiquity of the 1940s and has continued over the decades, featuring a variety of authors—some of whom, like Louis de Wohl for example, were writers of supreme talent. Several of the books in the series have been reviewed by your humble blogger over the years, among them books on Saint Helena, Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, and Saints Louis and Zelie Martin. The last...

When I finished and published my first novel, it became apparent to me that an Author’s Website was important. I set about creating mine. What are the benefits of an Author’s Website? It shows professionalism and dedication to prospective agents, publishers, event coordinators, journalists, and your readers. An agent or a publisher is far more likely to become interested in your novel if you demonstrate that you are dedicated to your craft. A website will confirm your dedication. You have full control over your brand and the presentation of your work. Even if social media or retail outlets remove or...

People coming of political age in the last decade or so were no doubt shocked to learn of the Biden administration’s insane plan for saving the northern spotted owl from purported extinction. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act, preserving the owl requires slaughtering nearly half a million barred owls at a cost, opponents say, of $1.3 billion over the next 30 years. That is so, the FWS maintains, because the larger, aggressive barred owl is killing its cousin at a prodigious rate. Perhaps more stunning to these political newcomers is...

Not to disappoint Philip Roth, but the fact that you title your book, The Great American Novel, does not make it a great American novel. My definition of Great American Novel is pretty straightforward: a first rate fiction, by an American, that tells us something large and expansive about the American experience. One other condition—it has to be readable. A caveat upfront for the sensitive: seven of the ten novels listed below use the word “nigger,” not the infantile “n-word,” but the actual word itself. For the last many years, we have collectively refrained from using “nigger,” even in an...

Why young men don’t read — and publishing doesn’t care.A quiet crisis is consuming the world of literature, and no one seems to care.Male writers are vanishing — not by fluke or market whim, but by design, denial, and quiet cultural disdain. Fewer men are reading fiction, and fewer men are publishing novels. (RELATED: Male Novel Readers Are Not Fiction)Men are reading less because the literary world no longer offers them mirrors.This isn’t a lament for some patriarchal golden age, where men smoked pipes, quoted Hemingway, and felt vaguely superior just for owning hardcovers. It’s a warning. The decline of...

Okay Freepers, you are a magnificent resource to draw upon. I'm hoping that among you are some who have already broken the ground I now seek to tread, and maybe you can give me some advice. Perhaps even tell me if I'm doing something wrong and could change up my approach.A lot of people have told me over the years that they wanted me to write my life story. It took ten years of on and off labor (and there came to be even more things to write about in that time) but in the end this past November I...

1969 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's classic horror short story.Click hereNo doubt that Old Man Warner is praying he doesn't win again.

Over the past year, my husband and I have watched both film versions of 'Inherit the Wind'. I would like to read a good book about the Scopes trial, free of the dramatization and fictionalization. Can anyone suggest what they think is the best book? Thanks.

Hello everyone! I recently released my very first science-fiction, political-thriller novel on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I've been told that the work seems to embody the writing style of a Tom Clancy or a Michael Crichton, blended with an Isaac Asimov. While this is high praise, indeed, I want to go to the next level. Enter an analysis of a very quiet, very low-action scene in the first season of Game of Thrones. That analysis is here.The analysis is stellar. The writing is stellar. The analysis talks about how: Robert Baratheon was not a lecherous drunkard, but actually a very...

Incredible new post-apocalyptic novel based on conservative ideals and current events Hey folks, I’ve just finished a newly released novel titled “Ivy Moon Total Eclipse” and I have tell people about it. Trust me, it’s like nothing you’ve ever read. It’s by a guy named Bill Furney who lives in North Carolina where I live and the story takes place in the eastern part of the state. Technically, it’s a young adult novel, but in the vein of Hunger Games, which simply means there’s no sex, drugs, or profanity. But the story revolves around adult themes and conservative principles that...

A special section inserted into the Sunday Chicago Sun-Times featured page upon page of fun summer activities, including a list of 15 books to bring along while lounging by the pool or relaxing in a favorite reading spot. The only problem: The authors are real, but most of the books don’t exist. Artificial intelligence, employed by a Chicago freelance writer, simply made them up. Readers looking to fill their carts with titles such as “Tidewater Dreams” by Isabel Allende, “The Collector’s Piece” by Taylor Jenkins Reid or “Hurricane Season” by Brit Bennett were likely disappointed to find the elaborate plot...

Nearly 2,000 years after it was buried in Mount Vesuvius ash, a charred Roman scroll has revealed its author and title without even being unrolled. Title revealed on PHerc. 172 using ink detection model. - Vesuvius Challenge The scroll, named PHerc. 172, is one of hundreds unearthed in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which was entombed in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, one of history’s most infamous eruptions The scroll was scanned in July at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Unusually, traces of ink appeared in the X-ray images, enabling...

There’s nothing like the magic of getting lost in a good book. Who doesn’t love being dazzled by a fantastical world, riveted by a twisty murder-mystery plot, or emotionally destroyed by an epic ending from the comfort of their couch? But if it’s been months or years since you’ve devoured a book, you might be wondering where that spark went—and if you can ever get it back. First off, there’s no shame in losing your bibliophilic gusto at some point. Thanks to the little dopamine dispensers glued to our palms and endless TV shows competing for our attention, it’s a...

Pelham Grenville (PG – or Plum) Wodehouse breathed his last on Valentine’s Day fifty years ago. As Evelyn Waugh saw it, Wodehouse inhabited a world as timeless as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Alice in Wonderland. Wodehouse himself said it was as though he was forever in his last year at school. It was, Waugh said, ‘as if the Fall of Man had never happened’. In a letter to some admirers, Wodehouse wrote: The world I write about, always a small one – one of the smallest I ever met, as Bertie… would say – is now not even small,...

Some of the most checked-out books in public libraries across the country in 2024 include Kristin Hannah's The Women, Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing, and Emily Henry's Happy Place. These books landed on the year-end wrap lists of public libraries in New York City, Cincinnati, Seattle and other cities. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin, was the most checked-out adult book in New York City and the second-most popular adult fiction book in Denver. There, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store was number one; that novel by James McBride also made the most-borrowed lists at libraries in San Francisco,...

Kids aren’t reading anymore. That’s the conclusion of a recent article by The Associated Press noting that children are not only reading less for fun — only 14% say they do so daily compared to 27% in 2012 — but they are also not getting assigned actual books much in class either. Per the AP, “In many English classrooms across America, assignments to read full-length novels are becoming less common. Some teachers focus instead on selected passages — a concession to perceptions of shorter attention spans, pressure to prepare for standardized tests and a sense that short-form content will prepare...

Being popular on TikTok can make just about anything fly off the shelves, from beauty products to cucumbers…Books are no exception – authors such as Colleen Hoover and Sarah J Maas have what is known as “BookTok” to thank for their stratospheric success. Now joining their ranks, in a twist nobody saw coming, is Fyodor Dostoevsky. In 2024, the Penguin Classics little black book edition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth most sold work of literature in translation in the UK. “We have a member of staff who has worked here for 25 years and he said we’d sell...

Uncover the dark and curious truth behind the death of one of America's most beloved authors, Edgar Allan Poe. For centuries, the circumstances surrounding his death have remained shrouded in mystery. See video.

For your Halloween Reading edification. One of the scariest stories of all time. Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr. This story was the basis for several movies called 'The Thing'. https://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/xnon_active_classes/filmst_118/FILMS/ThingFromAnotherPlanet/Who%20Goes%20There_Book.pdf

An amateur historian has discovered a long-lost short story by Bram Stoker, published just seven years before his legendary gothic novel Dracula. Brian Cleary stumbled upon the 134-year-old ghostly tale while browsing the archives of the National Library of Ireland. Gibbet Hill was originally published in a Dublin newspaper in 1890 - when the Irishman started working on Dracula - but has been undocumented ever since. Stoker biographer Paul Murray says the story sheds light on his development as an author and was a significant “station on his route to publishing Dracula”. The ghostly story tells the tale of a...