Four Sci-Fi Retellings that Are Even Better than the Originals
It’s a popular cliché that science fiction is just regular fiction…IN SPACE! It certainly doesn’t help that Star Trek was pitched as “Wagon Train…IN SPACE!” and Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s “Hidden...
View ArticleA Glimpse of the Present in Tsarist Russia With Gregory Maguire’s Egg & Spoon
Wicked scribe Gregory Maguire takes his patented vim, vigor and wit and applies it to Russian folklore in his latest, Egg & Spoon. At times rollicking, the story follows two young girls, Cat and...
View ArticleThe Fall Dares To Out-Haunt Poe, And Three Other YA Retellings of Classics
As long as there are English classes and mandatory curricula, our teen years will be spent reading more classic literature than we will at any other point in our lives. It makes sense, then, that young...
View Article17 Contemporary Reads Inspired by William Shakespeare
Today the literary world is honoring the life, and death, of William Shakespeare. While his exact birthday isn’t really known, we observe it on April 23, the date he died at age 52. And while there are...
View Article4 Classic Lit-Inspired 90s Movies We Love
The 90s weren’t all grunge rock, Snackwells, and Doc Martens. They were also a golden era for classic-lit inspired movies, each of them given a totally 90s modernizing treatment: Jane Austen met...
View ArticleThe Gap Of Time: Jeanette Winterson Takes On The Winter’s Tale
Taking on Shakespeare would make even the most talented writer pause, but you can’t feel the pause in Jeanette Winterson’s rewriting of Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. Winterson’s masterful new...
View ArticleJane Steele Is the Hard-Edged Jane Eyre You Never Knew You Wanted
Lyndsay Faye is a certifiable meddler in fiction. Her debut novel, Dust and Shadow, pitted Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper in a masterful showdown between a fictional giant and an enigmatic...
View ArticleEligible Author Curtis Sittenfeld Shares Her Top 10 Books for Pride and...
While Jane Austen’s enduringly popular novel of love and manners has been retold time and again, through many different mediums, it’s rare that an author of Curtis Sittenfeld’s stature has taken a...
View ArticleCurtis Sittenfeld’s Austen Update Eligible Explores Modern Pride and Prejudices
And now for something completely different. Well, sort of. Fans of Curtis Sittenfeld have come to expect her deceptively lighthearted skewerings of American culture, from the boarding school drama of...
View ArticleThe Taming of the Shrew Gets a Modern Makeover in Vinegar Girl
Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl is the latest in Hogarth’s series of Shakespearean classics retold by contemporary authors. With Vinegar Girl, Tyler (The Amateur Marriage) gives us her take on that classic...
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