Tag: books

  • The Dark History of Faerie Folklore in Joy Williams’ The Changeling

    Mimi Bhalla When I misbehaved as a child, my mother would suggest that I might be a Changeling. Her words were set with grim sincerity, as if seriously preoccupied that her baby girl might be gone, stolen in the night, replaced with an obscene imitation. At my indignation, she would double down until I was…

  • On Archives and Ghosts

    By Megan Snopik [An archive is] not only the history and the memory of singular events, of exemplary proper names, languages and filiations, but the deposition in an arkheion (which can be an ark or a temple), the consignation in a place of relative exteriority, whether it has to do with writings, documents, or ritualised…

  • Hothouse Writers Talk Banned Books

    With Freedom of Information day next week, and some recent Texas-school book banning, we asked the Hothouse Website writers to recall books that they had been banned from reading—and everything they did to eventually read those books. Megan Snopik In middle school, in typical future-English-major fashion, I was obsessed with reading “the classics” (you know,…

  • Jane Austen Heroines Ranked in Order by How Much I Want to Be Them

    Written by Madalyn Campbell Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) How can I want to be Fanny Price when I am already Fanny Price? She worries a lot, has horrible self-esteem, is too hard on herself, but is also terribly judgmental. She wallows in her own misery, is applauded as a sweet girl, but is often judging…

  • What You Should Be Reading in 2018

    Written by Emily Ogden ANYTHING, PLEASE.

  • Lola by Junot Diaz: Reshaping the Children’s Book Industry

    Written by Kiran Gokal Junot Diaz, the Dominican-American author of renowned books This Is How You Lose Her and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, recently released a children’s book called Islandborn which focuses on six-year-old Lola, an Afro-Caribbean girl who came over to the United States so young that she has no memories…

  • The Old “New Digital Age”

    Written by Sydney Stewart The world is constantly changing. Innovations occur, technology improves, societal customs shift with the times, and the responsibility is placed on the average individual to accept these changes. Yet with innovation comes a slew of new issues and more developments that must be made. While the digital era brings new challenges,…

  • Our Bodies, Ourselves—and Our Future, as the Eponymous Publication Announces No New Editions

    Written by Abby Adamo Today we discuss the end of the forty-year run of Our Bodies, Ourselves and what it means for the next generation of women who will grow up without this book updated and in circulation. But first: a story. During my first year of middle school I got a call on my…

  • Is Female Villainy All That Bad? Or, the Disappointing Heroines of the Fairy Tales Grimm

    Written by Carolina Eleni Theodoropoulos Looking for heroines in the fairy tales Grimm can get very discouraging. Those few women who do have agency still fail—to my contemporary standards, at least—to qualify as heroines. Women in these stories do not ask for what they want (they probably don’t even know what they want as they…

  • How Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Representation Continues to Impact and Inspire

    Written by Jeff Rose Discussions on the importance of LGBTQ+ representation and accurate media portrayals and novel adaptations continue to dominate much of literary culture today. Neil Gaiman and N. K. Jemisin recently talked about these issues in a  discussion posted on LitHub. As someone who read Gaiman’s The Sandman as a teenager, it was…

  • Brontë Society to Publish Two Lost Charlotte Brontë Manuscripts

    Written by Kendall Talbot I thought I had experienced everything there was to experience regarding the Brontës: I have read all their published work, studied their lives in a class dedicated solely to them, and even made a literary pilgrimage to their home in Haworth (yes, the moors are as bleak and melancholy as Emily…

  • On the Merit of Literary Awards

    Written by Madalyn Campbell LitHub recently published an article detailing award-winning books that have been generally forgotten in time. Scrolling down the list, even the most avid reader may find themselves facing completely unheard-of books. These books earned highest honors, yet they have been swept up in the tidal wave of history. How much merit…