We are in the midst of the dog days of summer, so everyone is getting in on the reading — and reviewing — action. As a result, Virginia Woolf’s novels are being both praised (#15) and panned (#3).
So I have to hand it to Heidi’s Books. Not only did she decide to start the Art of the Novella Reading Challenge with women writers. She decided to begin reading the 42 books in the series with Woolf’s Jacob’s Room.
But I can’t stop my praise there. Frances Evangelista of the Nonsuch Book blog, plans to read all 42 titles in the series this month and write a review of each on her literary blog. So far, she has kept her promise. She has posted 13 reviews.
Scroll down to #44 for more about Heidi.
- Neil Cooper Keith Bruce, Herald Scotland
Once swept away, however, the party of the year erupts into life with a guest list of 20th-century icons including Edith Piaf, Frida Kahlo, a well-oiled Picasso, a soggy Virginia Woolf taking stones from her pockets, Neil Armstrong and Muhammed Ali. … - Coverboy: Mondo, Metro Weekly
A framed photo of Helen Thomas, a trashy Virginia Woolf novel and a cheeseburger. Where do you keep the condoms and lube? 30 Rock. I relate a lot to Liz Lemon. What was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid? The Fairly OddParents. … - Tom Perrotta, Francine Prose, and others on “great books” that aren’t great., Slate Magazine
But if I had to pick the most overrated of the last century, I would choose first Virginia Woolf: noxious smoke and dusty mirrors. Not far behind, and for completely different reasons, William Carlos Williams: So little depends on stuff lying around. … - Could This Kickstarter Project About Chris Crocker Yield the Definitive Doc of …, Movieline
Which is fab. 3. The mysterious black and purple cloak/dress he’s wearing at 2:37. Like something Virginia Woolf’s Orlando would wear in a low-budget remake without Tilda Swinton. And with Chris Crocker. I’m rooting for this. Don’t leave him alone. - Summer reading: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Guardian (blog)
I was camping in France after my first year at university, To the Lighthouse was on my summer reading list, and I clearly remember feeling startled by the time I had finished the first page. by Virginia Woolf Looking back at that opening now, … - Hoss Intropia Fall/Winter 2011 Lookbook, becomegorgeous.com
Virginia Woolf said once that “dresses, though they may seem frivolous, have a much more important role then merely covering our body. They also change our vision of the world and the vision the world has of us”. Following this philosophy, the Spanish … - A very English modernism, Art Newspaper
Whether the works of Betjeman, John Piper, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, the Sitwells, Virginia Woolf and Evelyn Waugh add up to a kind of soft modernism reflecting the English character and climate is an interesting question. … - Donnelly’s ‘Rose’ trilogy comes to its epic conclusion, The Daily News Online (blog)
History and literature buffs will delight at cameos by Virginia Woolf, TE Lawrence and others. But whether readers are enamored of history or not, they are in for a smashing good story regardless.” Library Journal: “Donnelly skillfully integrates … - Lev Grossman on Exploring Magic, Moment by Moment, Wall Street Journal (blog)
Speakeasy sat down with Grossman to discuss the new challenges his characters face in the sequel, how he began writing fantasy, and why Virginia Woolf is as much an influence on his work as JK Rowling. At the beginning of “The Magician King,” where do … - God Is a Character, New Yorker (blog)
It seems apt that, in evoking the appeal of religion even to nonbelievers, Wood cites a work of art (in the event, Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”). Art is the closest thing that atheists have to religion, and it’s the devotion to art that ought … - Stand With Yourself! Stunning Insights from the Remarkable Jayden Morris, Student Operated Press
Random House published it and you were the next Virginia Woolf overnight. With performers and artists, the thought is much the same. In their `fairy-tale` they write a song, give a performance, and in less than a month they are the next `Lady Gaga,` or … - The Best Two Half-Decades in Literary History, Huffington Post (blog)
Classics from that period by authors who entered the world in cooler months included James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), LM Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (1926), Woolf’s To … - All of Edinburgh is a stage – even the loos, BBC News
But men are also invited to catch the “chance meeting with Ophelia and Virginia Woolf“. Ms Lampard said: “Every man who has come in so far has commented on how exciting it is to be allowed into this sacred and secret space.” Another unusual location is … - Across the literary pages, Spectator.co.uk (blog)
Something unpleasant in the woodshed: Rachel Cooke reveals what Virginia Woolf thought of Stella Gibbons’s comic masterpiece, Cold Comfort Farm. ‘In 1930 a young journalist called Stella Gibbons started a new job on the Lady, “the magazine for … - Lev Grossman, A.V. Club Chicago
So for me, massively influential are obviously James Joyce, another reinterpreter of Homer, and Virginia Woolf. My prose comes more from the Americans, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, rather obviously. The other influence is Evelyn Waugh. … - Holiday Reading, Daily Mail (blog)
Joseph Conrad, TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf were kind about him. What’s more, his books sold enormously well on both sides of the Atlantic, he was knighted, and he became very rich, with a lovely Lakeland house in his favourite part of England, … - Secularism and its discontents., New Yorker
I think of these anxieties as the Virginia Woolf Question, after a passage in that most metaphysical of novels “To the Lighthouse,” when the painter Lily Briscoe is at her easel, mourning her late friend Mrs. Ramsay. Next to her sits the poet, … - London site of Lawrence Durrell 100th anniversary celebration, Examiner.com
Bloomsbury is a vibrant historic district made most famous by a group of turn-of-the-century writers that included Virginia Woolf and EM Forster (“Bloomsbury Set”), economist John Maynard Keynes and the artist Roger Fry. Goodenough College has been … - Posted On Sunday, August 07, 2011 at 07:50:22 PM, Bangalore Mirror
In her wonderful book of essay-poems, Men in the Off Hours, poet Anne Carson begins with an essay called ‘Ordinary Time: Virginia Woolf and Thucydides on War’. Greek historian
Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War and in Book 2 of his History, … - Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm was just the beginning, The Guardian
The following year the novel even won the Prix Étranger of the Prix Femina-Vie heureuse, a surprising literary award for a comic novel, and one that infuriated Virginia Woolf (“I was enraged to see they gave the £40 to Gibbons,” Woolf wrote to … - Unfaithful reader, The Hindu
Carver and Chekhov Raymond Carver in turn loved Chekhov, another hero of mine, as did Virginia Woolf. This seemed to place them in a nice love triangle, which I, in love with the trio, felt was a good way for them to be. While Carver wrote of “the … - Happy 20th birthday, World Wide Web!, My Fox Boston
… you’re trolling on tumblr or parsing through Facebook today or working on that research paper about themes of mortality in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, take a moment to thank Tim for making everyone’s favorite resource/time-killer/thing a reality. - extended puberty without the blues, The Australian
IN her 1924 essay Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown Virginia Woolf declared that “On or about December, 1910, human character changed”. Arch, polemical and disingenuous, the line nevertheless began an argument about character and … - Feminism today: The long and winding road, The Guardian (blog)
And what on earth does Virginia Woolf have to do with Orwell? You may like her work or not but if you mean to suggest one is a pale shadow of the other then you clearly know little about it. Women have hardly ever been according equal rights and … - Excellence on Campus: Fairport, Penfield, Webster, Rochester, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
Quinton Saxby, son of Chantelle Saxby of Bloomfield, presented “Relational Selves in the Everyday: Virginia Woolf’s Depiction of the Conscious Power Struggle;” Ashley Wistner, daughter of Betsy and Shawn Wistner of Canandaigua, presented “Antisocial … - Expressway: Cabin, sweet log cabin, Newsday (subscription)
While I agreed with Virginia Woolf on the necessity of having a room of one’s own, I knew that, for me, responsibility for family was paramount. My “room” was wherever I could grab a pencil and paper and write. Although happiness comes from within, … - Dominique Woolf packs a punch, Mirror.co.uk
Raised by her father, Dominique is a distant relative of troubled writer Virginia Woolf. Until the age of nine she lived in the Middle East, where she made her TV debut singing with her dad. “It was on a show called Aunty Lucy, the equivalent of Blue … - This Season’s ‘Project Runway’ Includes A Local Face. Patch.com
DE: Always in my mind are heroines of the past, Annie Oakley, Katherine Hepburn and Virginia Woolf. These strong women has served as my moral and style icons. DE: Beautiful, functional, empowering pieces that nod to my background in fine art and … - Sylvia Heisel, Paper No. 9′s Paper Dress Wears Away to Reveal Inspirational …, Ecouterre (blog)
As the dress reacts with body heat and friction over time, the top layers peel away to reveal hand-scrawled inspirational quotes from big thinkers like William Shakespeare, Virginia
Woolf, Confucius, and even Tupac Shakur. Obviously this dress isn’t … - ‘The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London’ book launches, Time Out London
In short, we live in this city in a bookish way, haunted, seduced or cheered up by the characters we’ve met in novels, poems, plays and non-fiction – and when we walk around Bloomsbury or up Fleet Street we do so with Virginia Woolf and George Gissing. … - Theatre Ad Infinitum, The Skinny
Here a woman sings a cappella about her life, depression and suicide, inspired to the works and lives of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. If Odyssey is a breathtaking proof of versatility by the performer, The Big Smoke’s dark, introspective narration … - Virginia Woolf’s Tips for Telling Loved Ones to Keep Their Day Jobs, The Atlantic Wire
Virginia Woolf had this experience, and handled it quite well. In a letter released for the first time ever at The Paris Review, Woolf gently suggests to her favorite nephew, Julian Bell, that his poetry needs a bit of work. Monday. My dear Julian. …
Read More on Virginia’s letter to Julian–and a day at the beach - My PC Needs , ESP, Slate Magazine
It doesn’t just offer suggestions for keywords, as other browsers do, but actual results—when I type Virginia W, there’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on Virginia Woolf right there in the drop-down list. Google Instant, the search engine’s system to … - CanLit legend Frank Prewett’s aboriginal ancestry claims shot down by DNA, Vancouver Sun
Nearly a century after ‘Toronto’ Prewett penned his best poems about the battlefield horrors he’d faced in wartime Europe — then befriended the likes of novelist Virginia Woolf, fellow soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon and I, Claudius author Robert … - Preparing for Success, Huffington Post (blog)
I end the class with a quote from Virginia Woolf: “The success of the masterpieces seems to lie not so much in their freedom from faults… but in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective.” What does that mean? - When ‘Everything must go’ includes coffee, courtesy and jobs, Baltimore Sun
Virginia Woolf. Or taking time to peruse the bargain book racks, with all the $9.99 children’s books about the universe or Learn to Play a Harmonica kits you could want. Where will I go to find cool last-minute birthday or Christmas presents that don’t … - First-time author Amor Towles debuts first novel ‘Rules of Civility,’ about NY …, New
York Daily News
It was a time when, he says, “suddenly, you have James Joyce reinventing the novel with Virginia Woolf, and you have Picasso and the Dadaists and Nijinsky in dance, and atonal music, and the skyscraper is invented. … Almost every field of human … - The Stranger’s Child shows us that history is written in the margins, The Guardian
In this context, I often recall the use of the first world war in Virginia Woolf’s To the
Lighthouse. This first major global conflict happens in the margins of the pivotal central section, aptly titled “Time Passes”. Ten years elapse, and much happens … - Literary Life: July 31, Telegraph.co.uk
They are all children’s stories written by, respectively, James Joyce, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley. Publishers Weekly ranks them alongside TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince. … - Mystery author Jane Cleland invites you to a public reading of her noir play, Examiner.com
The title “The Writer’s Room,” harks back to a wonderful quote from Virginia Woolf. Writing in A Room of One’s Own, she said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” With thanks to the lovely Jane Cleland for … - Dog stories for the dog days of summer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (blog)
… Brenda Aloff’s “Canine Body Language: Intrepreting the Native Language of the Domestic Dog,” “The Dog Whisperer” by Paul Owens and “Shaggy Muses” by Maureen Adams (five
women writers and their dogs, including Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf). … - Two Great Summer Reads, Patch.com
I had very little trouble following the gist of the narration (Virginia Woolf, for example, is much more difficult). It unfolds like a puzzle that slowly and continuously reveals itself. I was at times bowled over by Egan’s beautiful prose. … - Marla Mase: The Goddess Continues to Inspire!, Student Operated Press
And it would be incredibly horrific for the next Virginia Woolf to be stalled or unheard of because of this. Not only that, but Tinderbox also allocates some of its donations to the Willie
Mae Rock Camp for Girls (http://williemaerockcamp.org/). … - Wine, tea, kindred spirits, and statistics… The Art of the Novella Reading …, MobyLives
Heidi’s Books is beginning the challenge with a reading/review of Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, accompanied by a cup of “China green tea with pineapple.” Words and Peace began with James Joyce’s The Dead. Ready When You Are, CB began with How the Two …
True. It’s a non-definition. And, like you, I am always playing the numbers game. Counting the number of white men in news photos, counting the number of women named in the NYT Book Review email. So please don’t refrain from making such comments about the dearth of women on such lists. As Audre Lorde says, “Your silence will not protect you.” I don’t always remember that, but I try.
I read that so-called ‘definition,’ but it didn’t in any way define the genre; rather, they’re selling books & it’s a clever marketing gimmick. But motivations are rarely pure, & I agree that it’s an interesting list & that it’s good to see Woolf on it. I’ll refrain from any comments about there being only 7 women among the 42 selections…
I know what you mean, Alice. I certainly would not define Jacob’s Room as a novella. On the other hand, I am glad Woolf is on the list.
Melville House Publishing, which is sponsoring the event, defines novella — and the event — this way: “Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature’s greatest writers. In the ART OF THE NOVELLA series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.”
The list of novellas is fascinating & challenging. I’d hate to admit how few of them I’ve read; I plan to scrutinize this list & see how much I want to bite off. But – Jacob’s Room, a novella? Surely not? My Harvest/HBJ paperback is 176 pages; My Bartleby, in an anthology, a mere 20 or so. I’d say Jacob is a novel (ditto The Touchstone), not all that short, Bartleby a story, not all that long. Not worth fussing about, I know, but I dislike the term – novella – it sounds belittling, like the diminutive suffixes added to feminize words – authoress, aviatrix, &c.