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Mark Flanagan

Updated Articles and Resources

By Mark Flanagan, About.com Guide since 2003

    Updated Articles and Resources
    • The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall Created: Sunday, May 20, 2012 Updated: Sunday, May 20, 2012
      Jonathan Gottschall, an English professor at Washington & Jefferson College, taps a variety of disciplines - psychology, sociology, anthropology and more - as he explores the reasons for and origin...
    • The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani Created: Saturday, May 19, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2012
      Adriana Tigiani's story of star-crossed Italian lovers is a novel rich in family, history, and story-telling. It is not to be missed.
    • A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava Created: Saturday, May 19, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2012
      Sergio De La Pava originally self-published A Naked Singularity, the story of Casi, a young public defender caught in a surrealistically bizarre justice system in a postmodern novel that is garneri...
    • Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts by William H. Gass Created: Saturday, May 19, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2012
      Essays from award winning essayist, novelist, and literary critic William Gas, in which he once again shows the various perspectives at which he can aproach the topics of reading, writing, and thou...
    • Suddenly, a Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret Created: Sunday, April 29, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2012
      Israeli author Etgar Keret is back with
    • The Book of Drugs by Mike Doughty - Book Review Created: Sunday, April 29, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2012
      Mike Doughty is the former lead man for the 1990s band, Soul Coughing. The Book of Drugs is Doughty's rock and roll addiction memoir, his story of his rise with Soul Coughing and his fall at the ha...
    • Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - Book Review Created: Sunday, April 29, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2012
      In book two of the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen finds herself challenged by President Snow himself to live up to the star-crossed lovers act she and Peeta played in The Hun...
    • The New Republic by Lionel Shriver - Book Review Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2012
      Written in 1998, The New Republic is a satirical novel that takes on the topic of terrorism in the form of a radical Portuguese organization that protagonist Edgar Kellogg happens upon in his searc...
    • The Sea Is My Brother by Jack Kerouac - Book Review Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 29, 2012
      The Sea is My Brother, described as Jack Kerouac's
    • The Cove by Ron Rash - Book Review Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Saturday, April 28, 2012
      Ron Rash, author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist novel Serena, is back with another historical novel set in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains. A woman suspected of witchcraft by the local to...
    • Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai - Book Review Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Saturday, April 28, 2012
      Published in 1985, Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Satantango is reknown as the inspiration for filmaker Bela Tarr's seven-and-a-half hour film adaptation, often considered a cinephile rite of passage. Tran...
    • 2012 New Book Releases - Books Coming in 2012 Created: Sunday, February 19, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 08, 2012
      2012 starts off with a bang, not a whimper, with new work from Ben Marcus, William Gibson, Geoff Dyer, and Katherine Boo. And then it just gets better. Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists promi..
    • May 2012 Books - New Books in May 2012 Created: Sunday, April 08, 2012 Updated: Sunday, April 08, 2012
      May 2012 books include new novels from Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, and Richard Ford, a fantastic Melville-infused YA novel from China Mieville, a self-published author's postmodern epic, and more..
    • Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway - Book Review Created: Friday, March 30, 2012 Updated: Friday, March 30, 2012
      A gangster's son and an aging secret agent team up in Nick Harkaway's Angelmaker to stop a doomsday device and an evil villain from bringing about the end of the world.
    • January 2012 Book Releases - New Books in January 2012 Created: Sunday, October 16, 2011 Updated: Friday, March 30, 2012
      January 2012 is the month of the post-apocalyptic, dystopic novel as evidenced by Ben Marcus' The Flame Alphabet, Rod Rees' The Demi-Monde Winter, and Ryan Boudinot's Blueprints of the Afterlife. A..
    • February 2012 Book Releases - New Books in February 2012 Created: Saturday, February 18, 2012 Updated: Friday, March 30, 2012
      Lone wolves and werewolves, a Presidential scandal and a Presidential tryst, and narrative nonfiction that reaches into the heart of Mumbai's impoverished underbelly. No lack for reading choices in..
    • March 2012 Book Releases - New Books in March 2012 Created: Sunday, February 19, 2012 Updated: Friday, March 30, 2012
      Some heady stuff in March. A collection of essays from Marilynne Robinson on politics, faith, and more, Jonah Lehrer's book about the nature of creativity, fantastic fiction from Adam Levin, Hari K..
    • April 2012 Book Releases - New Books in April 2012 Created: Friday, March 30, 2012 Updated: Friday, March 30, 2012
      This month, Christopher Moore is back to take on the Great French Masters, Jonathan Franzen delivers a collection of essays, and Ron Rash and Anne Tyler both emerge with new novels.
    • Autoportrait by Edouard Levé Created: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Updated: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
      Edouard Levé's Autoportrait is a brutally honest autobiographical portrait of the author constructed from more than 3000 simple sentences about the author's likes, dislikes, preferences and fe..
    • Zona by Geoff Dyer - Book Review Created: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Updated: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
      A sprawling work caught between an essay, a novelization of a film, and a cinephile's diary, Zona is Geoff Dyer's celebration of Andrei Tarkovsky's under-appreciated film Stalker.
    • PEN/Faulkner Award Winners Created: Friday, June 15, 2007 Updated: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
      Named for William Faulkner, who used his Nobel Prize funds to create an award for young writers, and affiliated with PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists), the international wr..
    • Hot Pink by Adam Levin Created: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 2012
      Hot Pink by Adam Levin 3 ½ stars Hot Pink is a collection of ten short works by Adam Levin, author of 2010's magnificent novel The Instructions. These stories provide brief, wry glimpses into ..
    • Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult Created: Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 2012
      Jodi Piccoult is known for centering her novels around issues of morality, and Lone Wolf is no exception. Using the behavior of wolves within their packs as a model, Piccoult confronts the difficul..
    • Writer, M.D.: The Best Contemporary Fiction and Nonfiction by Doctors Created: Monday, March 19, 2012 Updated: Monday, March 19, 2012
      An anthology of medically themed essays and stories written by doctors, Writer, M.D., highlights the decisions, tragedies, and skills that doctors must experience and learn to work through as part ..
    • Iago by David Snodin Created: Monday, March 19, 2012 Updated: Monday, March 19, 2012
      Beginning where Shakespeare's Othello leaves off, David Snodin's Iago finds the eponymous villain Iago doing battle with the powerful and evil chief inquisitor of Venice, Il Terribile.
    • How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm by Mei-Ling Hopgood Created: Monday, March 19, 2012 Updated: Monday, March 19, 2012
      In How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, Mei-Ling Hopgood questions Western parenting methods and embarks on an anthropological quest to understand how other cultures raise their young.
    • Jack Kerouac - Biography of Jack Kerouac Created: Friday, March 12, 2004 Updated: Monday, March 12, 2012
      Jack Kerouac lived a short and fast life between 1922 and 1969. Hailed for his 1957 novel, On the Road, based upon years of cross-country adventures with friend and muse Neal Cassady, Kerouac is a..
    • Lionel Shriver - Biography Created: Sunday, February 26, 2012 Updated: Sunday, February 26, 2012
      Lionel Shriver is the American author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, So Much for That, and The New Republic among many other novels. She is a journalist who has been published in numerous publicat..
    • Hari Kunzru - Biography of Hari Kunzru Created: Sunday, February 26, 2012 Updated: Sunday, February 26, 2012
      Hari Kunzru is the British author of The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolution, and Gods Without Men. Kunzru was born in London, educated at Oxford, and worked for years as a freelance journal..
    • The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner Created: Sunday, February 26, 2012 Updated: Sunday, February 26, 2012
      An entire pantheon of ridiculously-imagined and slightly hungover gods and goddesses roll into the universe on a bus blaring the Mister Softee jingle and take up residence in Dubai's Burj Khalifa, ..
    • Men in Space by Tom McCarthy - Book Review Created: Saturday, February 25, 2012 Updated: Saturday, February 25, 2012
      Men in Space is Tom McCarthy's (C, Remainder) first novel, a cinematicaly-inclined story set in the 1990s whose characters range from a Bulgarian football referee to a stranded astronaut, all of wh..
    • The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus - Book Review Created: Saturday, February 25, 2012 Updated: Saturday, February 25, 2012
      In The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus' dark and dystopic novel, children begin speaking a form of speech that is lethal to adults.

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