Featured review
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Carol Ann Wilson reviews The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones. "As an educator myself, working in and with schools and higher education institutions for more than four decades, I felt drawn to the project’s scope and depth. My work for many of those four-plus decades focused on the role of our public schools in a social and political democracy and the importance of educating all students equitably and excellently. For me, a central question has been how we can do that when we don’t know more of the whole story ourselves."
Share
Grave Seas and A Syrian Riddle
“For a Syrian, like myself, the whole road to my country has been, and always will be, filled with fatal riddles and dangerous words.”-Hussam Eddin Baramo
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Carol Ann Wilson reviews The 1619 Project, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones. "As an educator myself, working in and with schools and higher education institutions for more than four decades,…
Category Unknown
“I am a white Englishman, an IC1, and this was never supposed to be my fate.” As with Another Kind of Concrete, Koushik Banerjea’s 2020 full-length debut, Category Unknown bounces…
The Philosophy of Marvin Goodspeed
The Regular, the new novel by Dave Buckhout, is a philosophical novel, and its main protagonist, Marvin Goodspeed, is a philosopher. That said, what is the philosophy of this modern day…
Two Novels that Strike Close to Home: On Finding Oneself in a Book
The novel Disclaimer uses a “book-within-a-book” literary device and that got my attention as I’m now finishing a novel in which I use the same literary device.
More reviews
Category Unknown
“I am a white Englishman, an IC1, and this was never supposed to be my fate.” As with Another Kind of Concrete, Koushik Banerjea’s 2020 full-length debut, Category Unknown bounces…
Share
Two Novels that Strike Close to Home: On Finding Oneself in a Book
The novel Disclaimer uses a “book-within-a-book” literary device and that got my attention as I’m now finishing a novel in which I use the same literary device.
Share
The Philosophy of Marvin Goodspeed
The Regular, the new novel by Dave Buckhout, is a philosophical novel, and its main protagonist, Marvin Goodspeed, is a philosopher. That said, what is the philosophy of this modern day…
Share
Interviews
Michael Fertik
Michael Fertik is a published fiction author, poet, produced film writer, and playwright whose writing has won fiction, poetry, and film prizes and includes a New York Times Bestseller. His novella Allotrope was published in The Write Launch and a review of his book Hip Set is available on…
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a physician and writer with work in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized…
Rana Abdulfattah
Rana Abdulfattah is a Syrian writer in exile. She grew up in a Damascus suburb in Syria and studied English literature in Damascus and the USA. Her debut poetry collection, Tiger and Clay – Syria Fragments, is part memoir and reminiscence, part meditation and critique.
Jeff Schnader
Jeff Schnader was at Columbia University in 1972 where he participated in sit-ins, marches and protests against the Vietnam War. He took part in demonstrations in front of Hamilton Hall where students were beaten by N.Y. Tactical Police in full battle regalia. He graduated with a BA in…
The Writer’s Journey
The Beach and the Blues
“A Train Whistle Blows” was my first short story that was not conceived and developed from first-hand experiences or any individual(s) that I’ve encountered, known, read about, interacted with, or heard about. I purposely veered away from farming and harvesting a story from the familiar to expand my writing…
A Matter of Serendipity
Today, I am reveling, writing in Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount. It’s quiet. I am sitting at a small table in front of a window in the room on the third floor that was Henry James’ bedroom. I knew I wanted to write from an early age but lacked the courage to pursue my dream. I was a born reader but that didn’t mean I could…
It’s a London thing
Ever find yourself rolling your eyes when you hear that phrase ‘back in the day’? As often as not uttered by some grisled cynic bemoaning the loss of an older world and its deep treasures. Analogue by instinct, the lament typically covers those tangible gifts of vinyl, gatefold sleeves, hard copy and some even tougher…
On Telling a Fractal: Parsing Patterns in My Prose
When you look at a mathematical fractal, you see self-similarity; not only do different parts of the figure look almost alike, it looks the same as you zoom in and out of it, its form governed by the parameters of the iterative algorithm that generates it. Can narratives similarly iterate by filling time rather than space,…
Essays
Liu Xiaobo: Tyranny, Freedom of Conscience, and the Incompleteness of the Individual
After Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, I followed the news about him—this dissident public intellectual who had given the Chinese government a major headache. Having read many books about nonviolent thought and action, I sensed that Liu Xiaobo’s life and writing could deepen my understanding further: He believed that words followed by action could change the direction of a country.
Share
Essays
Liu Xiaobo: Tyranny, Freedom of Conscience, and the Incompleteness of the Individual
After Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, I followed the news about him—this dissident public intellectual who had given the Chinese government a major headache. Having read many books about nonviolent thought and action, I sensed that Liu Xiaobo’s life and writing could deepen my understanding further: He believed that words followed by action could change the direction of a country.
Share
The Longform Book Review
The longform book reviews on bookscover2cover are narrative, descriptive and analytical. Through a close reading of the text, the reviewer identifies themes and motifs embedded in the text and examines contextual information to verify facts. To develop a coherent argument in favor of the book, the reviewer offers readers insight, not mere judgement.
Share
The End of the Beginning: Building the Structural Foundation
When I write, I have a plot sketched out in my mind and sometimes laying out the groundwork can be laborious and even boring. It’s essential, though, that I push my way through the initial drudgery and progress to the middle and the end of the story. When I finally type “The End,” I know I’m deluding myself. It’s only the end of the beginning. Usually at that point I am weary of the story…
Share
Tell Me a Fractal
Think of a snowflake forming around a molecule of water clinging to a tiny particle of something, how it blossoms and diverges as other molecules join in, seeking their hexagonal destiny, becoming a perfect thing of beauty. Then think of it melting, its sharp edges blurring, its interstices blotting out until it plops to earth. That’s a story, right there, in full surround. Matter, space…
Share
Longform reviews
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine
Ben Ehrenreich, on assignment for Harper’s magazine, went to Palestine’s West Bank in 2011 to report on Israel’s water war with Palestine. The Way to the Spring is based on his eye-witness account of life in the West Bank—in the village of Nabi Saleh and the cities of Hebron and Ramallah.
The New Jim Crow
Why has an academic book with a title that includes this mix—“Jim Crow,” “mass incarceration,” and “colorblindness”— resonated with the public? Clearly, Alexander has hit a nerve. Something profound is happening in American society.
Hip Set
Michael Fertik’s novel Hip Set is not only a thrilling detective story but also a literary inquiry into the sacred and the profane—the secular sandwiched between both. When it comes to human behavior, there is nothing pure about it, just as there is nothing pure about what lies on an arc between good and bad or between heaven and hell.
God Help the Child
The reality and impact of child abuse rests uneasily, front and center, with the interwoven themes of love and transformation. Meticulously crafted, God Help the Child is a journey of souls and hearts, a must-read book.
No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems
Liu Xiaobo is the author of hundreds of essays and seventeen books. Most of the essays in No Enemies, No Hatred are from the period between 2004 and 2008, and reflect, in the service of freedom of speech, how words followed by action can change the direction of a country.
From the Archive
You’ll Find Me in the Darkness, If I Let You
The poetry of Anthony Perales comprises straightforward and telling narratives about growing up in San Pedro, chasing the dragon, spending time in prison, learning native doctrine in the…
Empire of the Summer Moon
S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon is an historical narrative of heroes and legends set against the panorama of the American West, particularly the Texas frontier between the years 1836…
Chaya Bhuvaneswar: a reading list from a powerful voice in fiction
Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a new voice in fiction with the recent publication of her debut story collection, White Dancing Elephants. In her interview with bookscover2cover, Chaya notes that her…
Diane Chamberlain, an Author Study
Diane Chamberlain writes compelling fiction that features young female protagonists striving to prevail in a world that proves to be hostile towards them for reasons that are revealed as the…