Books Briefing
Our culture editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for the newsletter here.
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Underwood Archives / Getty The Writers Who Can’t Let Go of the South
Southern experiences and traditions can be deeply compelling, even exotic, to Americans who live in other areas.
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Lambert / Hulton Archive / Getty Unconventional Novels About Conventional People
In some great books, readers watch a character become disillusioned with their dreams of joyful conformity.
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H. Armstrong Roberts / Classicstock / Getty Let a Book Annoy You
Sometimes, an angry note in the margin can be an expression of love.
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Heritage Images / Getty What Very Different Places Have in Common
Gary Shteyngart finds the universal in Cape Town.
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Lawrence Alma-Tadema / Cincinnati Art Museum / Bridgeman … How Not to Recommend a Book
Even for those who make a career out of loving books, sharing the right ones with the right people can take years of practice.
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Illustration by The Atlantic Pushing the Limits of Historical Fiction
In a new book, Álvaro Enrigue uses absurdity to tell a fuller truth.
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Peter Dench / Getty How to Put Sex in a Novel
In a new book, intimate fantasies become a crucial vehicle for character development.
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Sophia Bassouls / Sygma / Getty The Fine Balance Required of an ‘Authorial Rant’
A cherished grudge might make it into a novel—but the best writers avoid creating books that feel one-sided.
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Evelyn Freja / Connected Archives Reading Is a Practice, Not a Chore
Try an attitude shift that doesn’t force you to choose between setting strict reading goals and giving up altogether.
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Pavel Tchelitchew / Bridgeman Images The Writer’s Magic Trick
Their job is to create living, three-dimensional people out of the ordinary stuff of ink and paper.
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Credit: GraphicaArtis / Getty Images A Biography Without ‘The Boring Bits’
One example I highly recommend focuses on the work, not the life, of its subject.
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Peter Marlow / Magnum Photos Taking the Internet Novel Offline
The author Madeline Cash has tried a new way to write an engaging novel about screens.
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Cristina De Middel / Magnum Images What a Fantasy Can Reveal About Real Life
A character’s daydreams can be a powerful indication of what they care most about.
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock. A Reading Resolution You Can Keep
Aim to bump older, culturally important, or much-recommended works to the top of your to-be-read list.
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Heritage Images / Getty A Peek at an Alternate Venice
Anne Applebaum went searching for the city the novelist Henry James got to know.
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Edwaerdt Collyer / Bridgeman Images / Gramercy / … Do We Really Know How Isabel Archer Felt?
Fictional people, especially those from the past, are interesting because they are both strange and familiar.
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Christie's Images / Bridgeman Debate Your Favorite Books of the Year
No list can match everyone’s tastes. That’s a good thing.
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Oleh Slobodeniuk / Getty Two Genres That Aren’t So Different After All
Reconsidering the plot-versus-not debate
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Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Horst Tappe / … A Great Author’s Ongoing Struggle
Vladimir Nabokov’s leap away from Russian, his native language, was not an instantaneous, effortless transformation.
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Anneliese Everts / Bridgeman Images Pop Culture Is Obsessed With Female Friendships
Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye perfectly portrays an intense, fickle, painful dynamic between women.
