Category Archives: bookmarks.reviews

Sanaë Lemoine on The Lover, King Lear, and A Little Life

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the author of The Margot Affair (out now in paperback), Sanaë Lemoine. * Book Marks: Favorite re-read? Sanaë Lemoine: These two short stories by Lydia Davis: “The Mother” for its delightful darkness […]

Miranda Popkey on Henry James, Sula, and The English Patient

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the author of Topics of Conversation (out now in paperback), Miranda Popkey. * Book Marks: Favorite re-read? Miranda Popkey: Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog: future Oxford, time traveling historians, ridiculous Victorians—nothing […]

Robert Kolker on Song of Solomon, American Pastoral, and Hating The Hobbit

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the author of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family (out now in paperback), Robert Kolker. * Book Marks: First book you remember loving? Robert Kolker: Shout!: The Beatles in […]

Viet Thanh Nguyen on Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Tintin

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer and The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen. * Book Marks: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with? Viet Thanh Nguyen: Ralph […]

Noé Álvarez on Bless Me, Ultima, The Jungle, and Thy Neighbor’s Wife

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the author of Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America’s Stolen Land, Noé Álvarez. * Book Marks: First book you remember loving? Noé Álvarez: Bless Me, Ultima. Pure magic for me. […]

In Context: Kazuo Ishiguro

Is there anything more thrilling than digging into a just-released book by an admired author? In Context is an essay series in which critic Lori Feathers looks at the latest work of fiction by an established writer within the context of their overall body of work. Lori explores her subject’s oeuvre by identifying the writer’s themes and cultural […]

Ted Dodson on Dhalgren, The Twits, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them. This week, we spoke to the author of An Orange, Ted Dodson. * Book Marks: First book you remember loving? Ted Dodson: I remember a charmed, school-less afternoon around eight or nine years old, lying on the […]

On Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler, beloved Sci-Fi titan and Afrofurturism pioneer, died on this day in 2006. Thirteen years previous she had published perhaps her most iconic (and certainly most eerily prescient) novel: Parable of the Sower. Set in 2024 in an America ravaged by climate change, wealth inequality, and corporate greed, the novel tells the story […]