All posts tagged: Fiction

The Best Queer Historical Fiction of the Century (So Far)

The Best Queer Historical Fiction of the Century (So Far)

Published by José Betancourt

Surrender by Jennifer Acker (Sapphic Fiction) American Spirits by Anna Dorn (Sapphic Fiction) Super Castle Fun Park by Daniel Zomparelli (Queer Fiction) The Girl Next Door by Georgia Beers (F/F Romance) Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill (Sapphic Horror) Somewhere in Nowhere by Steven Gellman (Gay, M/M YA Contemporary) Summer Official by Rebekah Weatherspoon (F/F YA Contemporary) Forgive-Me-Not by Mari Costa (F/F YA Fantasy Graphic Novel) Koharu and Minato: Happy Life with My Girlfriend Vol. 1 by Hyaluron & Daruma (F/F Manga) Cherry Blossoms After Winter, Vol 4 by Bamwoo M/M (Manhwa) May I Have a Taste? by Amidamuku, translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash (M/M Vampire Manga) So Dearly Reckless: Volume 2 by Tenma Asahi and illustrated by Tsutsuji Takahashi (M/M Light Novel) Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler (Trans Woman Biography) Nasty Work: Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself by Ericka Hart (Queer Nonfiction) Karl Lagerfeld: An Illustrated Biography by Alfons Kaiser and Simon Schwartz (Gay Graphic Nonfiction) Source link

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Isaac Asimov Reviews George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Calls It “Not Science Fiction, But a Distorted Nostalgia for a Past that Never Was”

Published by José Betancourt

Here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, a young read­er first hear­ing of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four would hard­ly imag­ine it to be a work of sci­ence fic­tion. That would­n’t have been the case in 1949, when the nov­el was first pub­lished, and when the epony­mous year would have sound­ed like the dis­tant future. Even as the actu­al nine­teen-eight­ies came around, it still evoked visions of a tech­no-total­i­tar­i­an dystopia ahead. “So thor­ough­ly has 1984-opho­bia pen­e­trat­ed the con­scious­ness of many who have not read the book and have no notion of what it con­tains, that one won­ders what will hap­pen to us after 31 Decem­ber 1984,” wrote Isaac Asi­mov in 1980. “When New Year’s Day of 1985 arrives and the Unit­ed States is still in exis­tence and fac­ing very much the prob­lems it faces today, how will we express our fears of what­ev­er aspect of life fills us with appre­hen­sion?” The occa­sion was one of a series of syn­di­cat­ed news­pa­per columns that Asi­mov seems to have pub­lished each new year. At the dawn of Nine­teen Eighty-Four’s decade, the syn­di­cate asked …

Seven Documentaries for Fans of Fiction

Seven Documentaries for Fans of Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Documentaries sometimes get a bad reputation for being slow-moving, but a good one can tell a story just as well as any fictional film can. According to our writers and editors, these are some of the best ones—seven documentaries that even the most documentary-averse can enjoy. The Queen of Versailles (available to rent on Prime Video and YouTube TV) If you would sooner turn on an episode of Vanderpump Rules than any PBS joint, may I recommend the 2012 documentary The Queen of Versailles? The queen in question is the multimillionaire Jackie Siegel, whose slightly hysterical mannerisms and boundless passion for shopping would make her a prime candidate for the Real Housewives franchise. Her castle is a 90,000-square-foot mansion in the humid reaches of central Florida, styled after the Palace of Versailles. (For context, that’s almost twice as large …

Tradwife fiction is this year’s most talked-about literary genre

Tradwife fiction is this year’s most talked-about literary genre

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Natalie Heller Mills is “the mother every woman wanted to be, and the wife every man wanted to come home to”. The protagonist of Yesteryear, the much talked-about debut novel from Caro Claire Burke, possesses the low-maintenance beauty of a period drama heroine. An adoring mother to six children who are so all-American that one of them is actually named “Stetson”, she spends her days churning butter, baking sourdough and feeding the chickens on her family’s sprawling ranch, Yesteryear. Its name is something of a mission statement. Natalie is harking back to the good old days of American homesteaders, while broadcasting the minutiae of her aesthetically pleasing ye olde lifestyle to her 8 million followers on Instagram. She is the “tradwife” par excellence, espousing a back-to-basics ethos perfectly calibrated to enthral and appal burnt-out 21st-century women with a doomscrolling habit. Natalie …

Is Bob Dylan Selling AI-Generated Fiction on Patreon?

Is Bob Dylan Selling AI-Generated Fiction on Patreon?

Published by Jenni Sidey

Somewhere deep in the heart of America, in the back of a bus hurtling down some godforsaken highway, Walmarts and cemeteries and Civil War battlegrounds whizzing past, mute and forgotten and eternal, Bob Dylan is on his iPad. In and of itself, this wouldn’t necessarily warrant commentary. Dylan is on the road again, on the final leg of the Rough & Rowdy Ways Tour, which began in the grand metropolises of the East in Fall 2021 and is now concluding, nearly half a decade later, in the dustiest nooks and crannies of the South. Dylan is a man who likes to see the sights, but his current destinations—Dothan, Alabama; Tyler, Texas—are so minor, so out of the way, one imagines there are few sights to see. So it seems he’s passing the time between performances the same way any of us would: by going on the computer. It’s what he’s doing on the computer that’s so fascinating. Several years ago, Bob began posting birthday messages, eulogies, and various cryptic missives on X.com. Shortly thereafter he …

The Facts About Writing Fiction (and Nonfiction, Too!)

The Facts About Writing Fiction (and Nonfiction, Too!)

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Writing a book is hard. That goes for any kind of book: children’s or adult, graphic or prose, fiction or nonfiction. But that doesn’t mean they’re hard in the same ways. I talked to Sophia Glock, creator of the graphic memoir Passport and the graphic novel Before We Wake, about the unique challenges she faced when working on each of these books. Before We Wake is the story of a young teen, Alicia, who is struggling to cope with her father’s death and her best friend’s drifting away into other interests. While the story is fictional, there are superficial similarities to Glock’s own teen years: both she and Alicia grew up in the early 2000s, for instance. “Much of [Before We Wake] was inspired by actual events, and dreams, in my life,” Glock told me via email. “It’s a different sort of truth telling.” She was also able to use her own experiences to inform Alicia’s sense of …

Deborah Levy: ‘CS Lewis’s White Witch terrified me – but I wanted to meet her’ | Fiction

Deborah Levy: ‘CS Lewis’s White Witch terrified me – but I wanted to meet her’ | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

My earliest reading memoryThe Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, particularly the little red fan the cat holds in the tip of its tail. At the age of five, I was reading The Famous Five, getting to grips with Enid Blyton’s most complex characters, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin. I was born in apartheid South Africa. The children in the Famous Five series had no human rights problems and it is set in Dorset, a landscape that was totally unknown to me. My bedroom window in Johannesburg looked out on a garden of bone-white grass and a peach tree. My favourite book growing upI was delighted to move on to the imaginative sophistication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. CS Lewis’s lucky strike was to come up with the idea that a wardrobe was the portal to another world. Although she terrified me, I wanted to meet the White Witch, who rode on a sleigh pulled by white reindeer. The book that changed me as a teenagerChéri by Colette. For the sex and sadness about ageing and desire, …

Go Gentle by Maria Semple review – a joyfully clever New York romcom | Fiction

Go Gentle by Maria Semple review – a joyfully clever New York romcom | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

What would Marcus Aurelius have made of the Kardashians? Would Seneca have been amused by mindfulness apps? These were questions I had never consciously pondered before reading Maria Semple’s new novel. Neither, in my irrational and unvirtuous state, had I spent much time considering the application of Stoic philosophy to any other key aspects of modern life. Semple, best known for her exuberant, ingenious bestseller Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, here presents us with Adora Hazzard, Stoic philosopher and divorcee. Adora lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side, spending her days tutoring the twin sons of an old-money family in philosophy and seeking to live according to Stoic virtues, without recourse to destabilising “externals”. But her settled life is soon disrupted by that most classic of externals, the handsome stranger. “Curse these alluring men who throw us off our game!” (Marcus Aurelius, paraphrased.) What follows is tricky to categorise. Is it a knockabout comedy about the collective power of midlife women? (No, it isn’t, though it seems to gesture in that direction …

101 best book club picks, including mystery, romance and literary fiction

101 best book club picks, including mystery, romance and literary fiction

Published by Sam Flores

Dishing about what you’re reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Even better if your audience has read the same book. Reading with others also provides space to deepen community, ignite conversations and share moments of joy. Los Angeles needs that more than ever right now as we continue to shoulder a heavy 2025 marked by fires and ICE raids. But how to choose a book to get started? The best books to read in groups inspire a dialogue. They have sparkling prose and unshakable narratives. These were the guiding factors for compiling our recommendations for all kinds of readers. We surveyed 200-plus luminaries in the book and journalism worlds to make this in-depth list. The voters included prizewinning authors, indie bookstore owners, a Man Booker Prize judge, Ivy League professors, literary agents, lauded journalists and several zealous book club members. To ensure an especially varied selection, the editors gave a final curatorial pass. The list includes 10 categories for every type of reader, whether you reach for literary fiction or romance. We also crowned …

The Best Historical Fiction Books of the Century So Far

The Best Historical Fiction Books of the Century So Far

Published by José Betancourt

Selecting the best recent historical fiction books feels like a contradiction in terms. Historical fiction is a broad genre, encompassing thousands of years and spanning the entire globe. It can focus on the most well-known figures of all time or highlight everyday lives that don’t typically make it into textbooks. Ironically, historical fiction feels like a timeless genre—how can historical fiction be outdated or fresh? Despite that, the genre has changed significantly over the decades, especially since the turn of this century. World War II historical novels are still a staple of book club reading lists, and there are always new angles to take on that setting, but we’re also seeing much more diversity in the kinds of people and places historical fiction highlights. The best historical fiction books of the century so far take us from ancient Greece to the Joseon dynasty in Korea to the Six-Day War in Palestine to 1980s NASA astronaut training. Historical fiction continues to be biased towards recent events, but we are getting to see more of history around …