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The 10 best romance novels of all time

<p>Books in which man meets woman, man woos woman (or woman woos man), and man and woman live happily ever after are a dime a dozen. Enjoyable, for sure, but not what you'd call memorable. So, Reader’s Digest have come up with a list of 10 of the best romance novels that tell favourite, and timeless, love stories, each of which goes above and beyond basic romance.</p> <p>Whether it’s glimpsing 19th-century Russia in <em>Anna Karenina</em> or witnessing endless family drama on the Australian outback in <em>The Thorn Birds</em>, each of these fabulous books has something special.</p> <p>“These are much more than love stories; they are life stories,” says US Select Editions editor-in-chief Laura Kelly.</p> <p>“If you like a good love story, books are so much more satisfying than movies,” she continues.</p> <p>“Books take you into the minds of all the characters, where their hopes and dreams will really fire up your own imagination.”</p> <p><strong>1. <em>The Thorn Birds</em> by Colleen McCullough (1977)</strong></p> <p>Set in 1915 Australia, this remarkable saga chronicles the forbidden love between a beautiful, headstrong young girl and a priest.</p> <p>You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll stay up way too late reading this fabulous story.</p> <p><strong>2.<em> Jane Eyre</em> by Charlotte Brontë (1847)</strong></p> <p>“Reader, I married him.” Charlotte Brontë’s gothic masterpiece, with its unyielding heroine, dashing love interest Mr. Rochester, creepy manor house, and foggy English countryside, has become synonymous with 19th-century romance.</p> <p>And writing love stories ran in the Brontë family – Charlotte’s sister Emily’s classic <em>Wuthering Heights</em> is also a strong contender for this list of best romance novels.</p> <p><strong>3. <em>This Is How You Lose Her</em> by Junot Díaz (2013)</strong></p> <p>Technically a collection of short stories, <em>This Is How You Lose Her</em> counts as a novel because the stories all somehow connect back to the same one character’s life.</p> <p>The impressive way the Pulitzer Prize-winning Díaz weaves together multiple love stories – happy and sad, fleeting and lasting – from all around the world makes this one of the best romance novels of the 21st century.</p> <p><strong>4. <em>The Notebook</em> by Nicholas Sparks (1996)</strong></p> <p>Nicholas Sparks has made a name for himself as the writer of some of the best romance novels in recent years.</p> <p>Though he’s written more than 20 books, his first has stood the test of time for a reason.</p> <p>Noah and Allie’s tear-jerking, decade-spanning story remains the wonderfully escapist romantic read it was 20 years ago.</p> <p><strong>5.<em> Call Me By Your Name</em> by André Aciman (2007)</strong></p> <p>Even if you’ve seen the Academy Award-winning film, this enchanting story of first love and self-discovery is still more than worth a read.</p> <p>Prepare to fall just as in love with the magnificent Italian setting as with the story of summer romance and intoxicating attraction.</p> <p><strong>6.<em> The French Lieutenant’s Woman</em> by John Fowles (1969)</strong></p> <p>A Victorian gentleman is engaged to a wealthy and suitable woman, but when he encounters a beautiful, mysterious woman rumoured to be the forsaken lover of a French lieutenant, he becomes utterly smitten.</p> <p>Truly magnificent entertainment.</p> <p><strong>7. <em>Beautiful Disaster </em>by Jamie McGuire (2012)</strong></p> <p>With an edgy, modern twist on the good-girl-meets-bad-boy theme, <em>Beautiful Disaster</em> has topped must-read romance lists for a reason.</p> <p>After reinventing herself just before college, Abby finds herself involved in a tantalising bet with her school’s resident tattooed player.</p> <p>Neither of them is prepared for the results.</p> <p><strong>8.<em> The Time Traveler’s Wife</em> by Audrey Niffenegger (2003)</strong></p> <p>Every love has its challenges, and while your husband being an unwitting time traveller may not be one you’re familiar with, this four-hanky tale will still tug on your heartstrings.</p> <p><strong>9. <em>Anna Karenina </em>by Leo Tolstoy (1877)</strong></p> <p>Trapped in a loveless marriage, Anna Karenina succumbs to temptation and embarks on a dangerous affair with the handsome Vronsky.</p> <p>Tragedy unfolds amid the canvas of 19th-century Russia, in the most famous of doomed love stories.</p> <p>A memorable and enduring classic.</p> <p><strong>10. <em>Outlander </em>by Diana Gabaldon (1991)</strong></p> <p>A powerhouse time-travel romance, this is the first in Gabaldon’s hugely successful series.</p> <p>Strong, beautiful Claire Randall leads a double life, married to a man in one century, with a lover in another century.</p> <p>Filled with humour, passion, wit and wonderful Scottish scenery, this is one fast read for a 600-plus page book.</p> <p>Enjoy the wallow!</p> <p><em>Written by Reader’s Digest Editors. This article first appeared in </em><em><a href="http://www.readersdigest.com.au/true-stories-lifestyle/book-club/10-best-romance-novels-all-time">Reader’s Digest</a></em><em>.</em></p> <p><em>Images: Getty</em></p>

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5 crime books you need to read

<p>If you love a good whodunit crime thriller, our list of five must-read titles will be sure to get your heart racing.</p> <p><strong>1. Disclaimer byRenee Knight</strong></p> <p>When filmmaker Catherine finds a book on her bedside that tells in graphic detail about the day she took on the burden of a huge secret, she must decide whether to confront what happened that day, or keep it all hidden. The New York Times called it ‘an outstandingly clever and twisty tale.’</p> <p><strong>2. Fallout by Paul Thomas</strong></p> <p>The fifth book in the series about maverick cop Tito Ihaki, Fallout is hit New Zealand crime writer Paul Thomas’s fast moving sequel to Death on Demand. Ihaki agrees to look into a cold case as a favour to his boss, but in return he wants permissions to investigate his own father’s death.</p> <p><strong>3. Friday on My Mind by Nicci French</strong></p> <p>When a body is found floating in the Thames, identifying the victim seems simple enough when a hospital wrist band is found with the name Dr. F Klein. But Doctor Klein is alive and well and finds herself the number one suspect to the murder. The fifth book in the powerful Frieda Klein series sees the psychotherapist trying to clear her name as well as save her own life.</p> <p><strong>4. Gun Street Girl by Adrian McKinty</strong></p> <p>Book four and the last of the series about Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in a Protestant constabulary. As he investigates a gruesome double murder and suicide, Duffy finds evidence that suggests that things may not be as clear as they seem. The Boston Globe calls it ‘one of the best books of 2015.’</p> <p><strong>5. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay</strong></p> <p>The debut novel is a gripping read that is hard to put down once you begin the journey. A mother’s perfect life is turned upside down when she is kidnapped by armed men in Haiti. When her wealthy father refuses to pay the ransom, Mireille is forced to endure abuse and torment by a man who fights against all that she represents.  </p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><em><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/books/2015/11/short-classic-novels/">10 short classic books for the weekend</a></em></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><em><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/books/2015/11/banned-childrens-books/">8 children’s books that caused controversy</a></em></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><em><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/entertainment/books/2015/11/real-books-are-better/">Why real books will always be best</a></em></strong></span></p> <p><em>Image credit: Shutterstock</em></p>

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Damsels in distress: two new Australian novels fail to achieve their literary ambitions

<p>The covers of two new Australian novels, <a href="https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/hydra/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hydra</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/faithless-9780143791201" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Faithless</a>, play into a current design trend in Australian publishing. Faceless women in various states of melodramatic distress – either flung over furniture, or pictured against blurred or monochromatic backgrounds. Arms, hands or long, dishevelled hair conceal their faces. It’s a trend spurred on, no doubt, by the runaway success of Meg Mason’s <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460757222/sorrow-and-bliss/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sorrow and Bliss</a>.</p> <p>These are our new literary damsels, more muted in their elegant colour-coordinated breakdowns than their Hollywood golden age predecessors. The design did not suit the outrageously funny tone of Mason’s novel, but works well enough here as a portent. In Hydra, of an interior descent into mania. In Faithless, of longing in a decidedly calming shade of forest green.</p> <h2>Hydra’s ‘unhinged’ heroine</h2> <p>We first meet Anja, the heroine of <a href="https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/hydra/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hydra</a>, on her first day back at work in the high-end, cut-throat world of antique dealing, after a disastrous trip to the titular Greek island – where her marriage has seemingly fallen apart.</p> <p>We will not know why, nor get to those scenes, for another 140 pages – one in a series of structural missteps that will test the contract between writer and reader. Not knowing these details for so long effects our ability to fully understand Anja’s subsequent “unhinged” behaviour, or realise the island doesn’t, in the end, have much significance to this novel at all. Instead, Hydra refers to an Australian naval base: the HMAS Hydra, somewhere on the south coast of Victoria. Anja takes up a 100-year lease on a beach cottage there after being cast out of the antiques world for acting like a crazy woman.</p> <p>Initially, we roll with the refreshingly bad behaviour, as Anja goes to war with her ambitious, delightfully brassy underling Fran at Geoffrey Brown Auction House. Howell conjures this world well and it’s shame we move away from it so quickly, though we do understand why. The unforgivable act that closes out chapter two (and leads to Anja’s ejection from the antiques world) hits the reader hard: a poor old dame selling off her son’s estate ends up with a smashed coccyx, thanks to Anja’s actions. We strap ourselves in ready for more of the same.</p> <p>Howell is very good at keeping the reader on their toes and this novel is never dull. Major plot points explode like hand grenades as the hybrid narrative shifts between Anja’s highwire point of view, investigative reports from HMAS Hydra’s archives, and other assorted documents presented literally in the text. Despite a building sense of confusion and disbelief, we keep going.</p> <h2>Big cat mystery</h2> <p>The central mystery of this book is a cat. A big one. From the moment Anja first moves into the cottage, strange things start happening. Shit and dead animals left on her windblown porch, yellow eyes in the trees, a disquieting aura of being watched and hounded. At first, we’re not sure who or what is responsible for these trespasses that have Anja rushing home before nightfall and sleeping with a knife under her bed.</p> <p>Gradually, we learn the HMAS Hydra was gifted a cougar by their American allies. As more and more information is revealed to either counter or support the suggestion of a supernatural presence, we oscillate between beliefs. Is the cat real, a figment of her unravelling mind, a haunting, or the result of some sort of sinister naval experiment?</p> <p>By the time we hit the last third of the novel, we’re in a whirling dervish of jump scares – not rendered entirely successfully. The balance between plausibility and mystery stretches beyond breaking point. In a pivotal scene, where Anja’s unravelling really begins to take hold, a giant navy vessel visible from her house, grounded for decades, is struck by a bolt of lightning in an intense storm. It sinks in a matter of minutes. Anja abruptly falls asleep.</p> <p>In another, after getting sloshed to calm her mind, Anja clambers down the huge cliff face, glass in hand. She cuts her hand and leaps off a rock into the ocean – where she contemplates suicide for a while, clambers out again, can’t find her way back up, leaps onto some more rocks, smashes her teeth in, then lies on her back and laughs manically. She spends the rest of the novel walking around toothless.</p> <p>Conceptually, each twist and turn might be justified, but we lose all sense of narrative security – and our confidence that Howell is adequately guiding us out of the eye of this adrenaline-fuelled storm falters. In the end, like Anja, we’re asked to take too many implausible leaps.</p> <h2>Faithless – a ‘questionable plot’</h2> <p>Take away all the literary allusions and carefully constructed prose and the plot of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/faithless-9780143791201" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Faithless</a>, by two-time novelist Alice Nelson, skates very close to highly commercial romance.</p> <p>Max – a famous, handsome, married, middle-aged writer – meets Cressida, a beautiful young English girl, on her family’s estate in India. It’s recently been converted into a boutique hotel, due to her dead daddy’s mishandling of money. Their affair continues for decades, as she burrows away in her garret back in England working on translations, meeting Max for “clandestine liaisons” where they spend more hours wandering in gardens “rampant with the smell of wisteria” and quoting Goethe and Proust to each other than they do having sex.</p> <p>Until along comes the “vastly generous” Leo – another handsome man who relieves her of her money troubles, so she can finally write and become fabulously famous and rich herself. The to and fro between Leo and Max continues until fate decides for them all – and Cressida heads to the village town of Dunwich, where Max once lived, to mooch about in her memories under “listless” skies by “roiling” seas, accompanied by the mysterious orphan Clara.</p> <p>Any potential entertainment value offered by this questionable plot is further weakened by its delivery – everything has already happened and is being told to us. Cressida is writing one long letter to her dead lover Max: “Oh we had delight Max, hour after hour of pure pleasure.” These second-person sections are framed by shorter scenes in contemporary Dunwich, where nothing much happens. This structural decision means the grand love affair, the “all consuming” love Cressida feels for Max, is rendered passionless in recall.</p> <p>Max is also, unfortunately, a pretentious cad. The first time he kisses Cressida doesn’t happen until page 91. And he tends to accompany each kiss or interaction with her with a quote, such as, “Now no discourse, except it be of love.” (From Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona.) A similar loftiness inhabits the prose, where even the sex (what little there is of it) is strangely sexless and cliched.</p> <blockquote> <p>On Sunday we woke early, just as the sun was rising in a vast plume of orange above the mountains. We made love slowly, with a tenderness that made me want to weep. You stared down at me as if you were gazing at something extraordinary, something slightly bewildering. It was always the face I believed most revealed you. Max; the one you turned to me as you rose above me in bed.</p> </blockquote> <p>If this is a book about love and literature, it operates in a rarefied world I do not believe or recognise. Perhaps I’ve seen a guy like Max wandering around a writer’s festival: a lavender cashmere sweater draped around his shoulders, his long-suffering, much younger mistress drinking in his lame references to dead white males.</p> <p>Maybe, but that image is also cliched. Neither the plot nor the writing is up to the literary ambition that defines this novel. Endless quotes and allusions to the greatness of others cannot save it.</p> <p><strong>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/damsels-in-distress-two-new-australian-novels-fail-to-achieve-their-literary-ambitions-187089" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.</strong></p>

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Man cops library fine after returning book 84 years late

<p>After making it through 84 years, several generations and the bombing of an English family home, a classic novel has been returned to the library where it belongs. </p> <p>Paddy Riordan found the copy of Richard Jefferies' Red Deer while he was cleaning out his mother's home late last year, and decided against throwing the tattered book away. </p> <p>Instead, he discovered it was a library book that had been taken out on a load, and decided to return it a mere 30,695 days late.</p> <p>The father-of-two popped back into the Earlsdon Carnegie Community Library with the outrageously overdue book to hand it back to its rightful home. </p> <p>But being a numbers man, Paddy wasn't content to simply return the book, as he also whipped up a spreadsheet to work out how much he owed for the overdue fee. </p> <p>Luckily for him, the tardiness penalty was set at one penny per day, a weightier sum at the time but which when converted into decimal currency came to a grand total of just £18.27 ($32.68), which he donated to the library.</p> <p>"I've seen one or two people who've worked out that at the current rate of fines, if I was paying at the current rate, it should be over £7000 that I would be paying," he jokes.</p> <p>"So I may need to be careful not to visit Coventry for a number of years hence."</p> <p>He thinks the book must have been hired for his mother, Anne, who was just six on October 11, 1938, when it was first checked out, but has no idea what "nefarious reasons" his grandfather, Captain William Southey-Harrison, may have had for not returning the book.</p> <p>"I'm not too sure why my grandfather didn't return the book but in 1940, during one night of the Blitz, the family lost the house," he tells <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/library-books-overdue-man-returns-book-84-years-late-and-pays-the-fine/e9c197c5-7fe5-4060-9286-674b74354777" target="_blank" rel="noopener">9news.com.au</a>.</p> <p>"But somehow in the rubble (they) clearly found the book, which has remained sort of with family possessions ever since."</p> <p>Lucy Winter, the library's community engagement coordinator, is just as surprised by the enthusiasm her quick Facebook post has generated.</p> <p>"Here's something you don't see every day... a copy of Red Deer by Richard Jefferies has been returned to us - a mere 84 years and two weeks overdue!" she wrote.</p> <p>"How wonderful that the book has finally made its way home!"</p> <p><em>Image credits: Earlsdon Carnegie Community Library</em></p>

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A dystopian or utopian future? Claire G. Coleman’s new novel Enclave imagines both

<p>I was reading Noongar author Claire G. Coleman’s third novel, <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/claire-g-coleman/enclave" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Enclave</a>, a few days after the US Supreme Court <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768" target="_blank" rel="noopener">overturned</a> the Roe v Wade judgement, a political victory for a conservative project many years in the making.</p> <p>As Michael Bradley argues in <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/27/trumps-activist-supreme-court-abortion-us-christian-theocracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his recent article in Crikey</a>, those driving this project “want to live in the America of their small imaginations: white, straight, patriarchal, Christian and mean”.</p> <p>Such small imaginations also inhabit the world of Enclave. Divided into two parts, the novel opens in a dystopian society just enough like our own to be disconcerting.</p> <p>The third-person narrative is told from the perspective of Christine, who is soon to turn 21. She has recently completed her undergraduate degree and is about to enrol in a Masters of Pure Mathematics. She has grown up in a walled town ruled by a Chairman and controlled by an Agency full of identity-less men in charcoal suits, backed up by security forces. People are led to believe that the widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/big-brother-is-watching-how-new-technologies-are-changing-police-surveillance-115841" target="_blank" rel="noopener">camera surveillance</a> and armies of <a href="https://theconversation.com/eyes-on-the-world-drones-change-our-point-of-view-and-our-truths-143838" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drones</a> keep them safe.</p> <p>The world is hotter than our own, so everyone lives indoors in temperature-controlled environments. Opening a window in your own home is enough to alert the security forces. Light does not illuminate – it sneaks up, heats up, blinds and glares. It is violent and ugly bright, not unlike the “blank and pitiless” gaze from W.B. Yeats’ poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Second Coming</a>.</p> <p>Christine lives a life of seemingly immense privilege. Servants are bussed in from outside the wall each day to serve her every whim. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/algorithms-can-decide-your-marks-your-work-prospects-and-your-financial-security-how-do-you-know-theyre-fair-171590" target="_blank" rel="noopener">algorithms</a> of the Enclave’s social network anticipate and manufacture desires that are met before Christine is even aware she has them.</p> <p>The Safetynet’s news service feeds residents a constant stream of images of the terror, violence and chaos outside the wall, from which the Agency is protecting them.</p> <p>The people of the Enclave live in uncannily similar homes that all seem new – even the faux old buildings of the University. They present perfectly manicured and curated lives on Safetynet socials. The town is nominally Christian, but no one goes to church.</p> <p>Christine is just starting to wake up to the reality of her situation. Her family is cold and loveless. Her father is a callous and unfeeling patriarch who works for the Fund, which controls the finances of the town. He wants Christine to do the same, at least until she gets married.</p> <p>Her mother drinks herself numb during endless long lunches with empty women who all share the same cosmetic surgeon. She exhorts her daughter to do the same, which is both menacing and hangover-inducing.</p> <p>Christine’s brother Brandon, a clone of her father, is a business student preparing to work for the Fund. He is, as she suggests, a real dick.</p> <p>Christine is also mourning the mysterious disappearance of her best friend Jack who, in a dig at the handful of controversially well-funded programs in the Australian university system, studied in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Western Civilisation Studies</a> department. She is awaiting a message from him through a secret channel. It never arrives.</p> <h2>Becoming illegal</h2> <p>Life in the Enclave is deeply oppressive, not to mention boring. Questioning the status quo is not tolerated. The lonely, loveless and listless descriptions of Christine’s world are enervating.</p> <p>Although she is meant to be rather smart, Christine has a remarkable lack of curiosity – an effect, one supposes, of the world in which she is raised. But for the first time in her life, she is starting to notice that all of her servants are brown-skinned or darker. Though they move around her home silently, catering to her every need, she doesn’t know any of their names.</p> <p>Things come to a head when she sees for the first time that one female servant in particular is breathtakingly beautiful. She feels desires that she wasn’t aware were even possible, and kisses her. They are caught on one of the many surveillance cameras. Her family is appalled, not only because Christine is attracted to a woman, but to a dark-skinned woman. According to her father, this makes her a “dyke, race traitor, bitch”. (I was more concerned about the power dynamics between master and servant.)</p> <p>Christine is cut off from everything – money, accommodation, communication – and taken into custody. She thus learns that Safetown, the name of her walled Enclave, is actually a private facility, so being without support is trespass. She is, in effect, illegal.</p> <p>Safetown, it transpires, is one of several organisations that established walled enclaves made possible by earlier government policies and laws. It is an economic and socio-political enclave started by extremely wealthy people, to produce and sustain a homogenous society.</p> <p>Christine is cast into the world outside Safetown: a hellish liminal zone where sunburned white exiles, dressed in rags and living off soup kitchens, slowly go mad. In this violent and dangerous place, people survive by trapping rats and pigeons with discarded wire. This wasteland is littered with corpses, evidence of prior occupation of the land on which Safetown was built.</p> <h2>Utopian and dystopian</h2> <p>Coleman’s vision is both utopian and dystopian. The world of the Enclave is a dystopia created in an attempt to realise an exclusive utopian vision: a homogenous world of straight white people served by a coloured underclass. In Safetown, everyone believes themselves to be protected from the chaos and violence outside the wall.</p> <p>Part two reveals Safetown as the walled dystopia the reader already knows it to be. And it offers a revised postcolonial and queer utopia – a place of radical inclusivity, in the form of a more technologically advanced version of Melbourne.</p> <p>Buildings are covered in plants to combat climate change. Trains are free to keep cars off the road. There is a universal income. Education is free and world-class. There is no surveillance or drones. Food is multicultural and always delicious; the coffee uniformly good (in that sense, not too different from Melbourne today):</p> <blockquote> <p>It was like a fever dream of a civic heaven, all light and beauty and people in connection with the natural world, which appeared to be invited into all human spaces […] And everywhere there were people, men, women, people she could not determine either way, every spectrum of skin colour from darker than Sienna to lighter than her.</p> </blockquote> <p>Like all literary utopias, Coleman’s idealised city reminds us that change is possible if we can imagine an alternative vision that makes change worth fighting and hoping for. But the novel also falls prey to the dangers of all utopias with its ideological certainty, its lack of nuance, the totality of its vision, and its dehumanisation of those who don’t share it.</p> <p>Surely, I’m not the only reader who is suspicious of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-our-utopia-careful-what-you-wish-for-165314" target="_blank" rel="noopener">utopia</a> in which everyone is beautiful. And a place where everyone is happy all the time has its own sinister and coercive feel, flying in the face of the human condition as it does.</p> <p>Having said that, Enclave is a novel that inclines towards hope. It touches on many of the issues of our own world – the ecological crisis, the scourge of racism, Australia’s treatment of refugees, greed and the manufacture of algorithm-driven desires, our acceptance of widespread digital surveillance and stolen attention, and the refusal to adequately acknowledge prior occupation and dispossession. It also reminds us of the dangers of the othering politics of fear.</p> <p>Enclave’s epigraph and some of its section titles are taken from Yeats’ The Second Coming, which describes a strange alternative to the prophesised return of Jesus. The poem opens in a world spiralling into chaos where</p> <blockquote> <p>The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />Are full of passionate intensity.</p> </blockquote> <p>The Second Coming proposes a catastrophic and apocalyptic vision for a world on the brink of self-destruction that seems all too apt for the present moment. Coleman’s novel offers us an alternative: a world in which people, in meeting the demands of the present with curiosity, courage and conviction, can bring about a more just and inclusive future.</p> <p><em><strong>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dystopian-or-utopian-future-claire-g-colemans-new-novel-enclave-imagines-both-182859" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.</strong></em></p> <p><em>Images: Goodreads</em></p>

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Liked Netflix’s The Chair? Here are 4 moving, funny novels set in English departments

<p>English departments are strange places. Even to those of us who spend our working lives inside them, they can seem utterly mysterious. Those looking in from outside must find them even more baffling. What exactly do lecturers do all day? They teach and interact with students, but what happens the rest of the time?</p> <p>Literary scholars everywhere, writes <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/english-literature-and-creative-writing/people/terry-eagleton">Terry Eagleton</a>, “live in a state of dread – a dread that one day, someone … will suddenly get wise to the fact that we draw salaries for reading poems and novels.” This fact, say Eagleton, “is as scandalous as being paid for sunbathing [or] eating chocolate.”</p> <p>He has a point.</p> <p>Harvard professor <a href="https://english.fas.harvard.edu/people/deidre-shauna-lynch">Deidre Shauna Lynch</a> says even more bluntly that what English academics get up to simply “does not look like work” to those on the outside. Those of us writing on literature, she suggests, must make our peace with this fact. We must resign ourselves to being largely unknown to the broader culture, living in quiet obscurity.</p> <p>And yet, as Netflix’s The Chair makes clear, life within an English department can actually look a lot like life in any other workplace. At the fictional Pembroke University, there are familiar office politics and dramas, as well as the usual mixture of ambition, resentment, and status-seeking that exist elsewhere. Professor Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh) steers a team of colleagues who have eccentric literary quirks but are recognisable figures in many workplaces.</p> <p>If you enjoyed this series, I’d recommend checking out these four novels, all of which offer compelling depictions of English departments. Forget the Campus Novel – the English Department Novel is a more interesting sub-genre.</p> <h2>1. Richard Russo, Straight Man (1997)</h2> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428162/original/file-20211025-19-ar21bw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428162/original/file-20211025-19-ar21bw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption"></span></p> <p>Russo’s comic novel shares many similarities with The Chair. It centres on the madcap adventures of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., who chairs an English department similar in size to that of Pembroke. Furious about recent financial cuts, Devereaux takes matters into his own hands. He uses a local television network to publicise his cause, threatening to kill one goose from the university pond every day until his department’s budget is reinstated.</p> <p>Russo emphasises the slapstick, farcical side of departmental politics. Straight Man is a glorious send up of self-serious academics, the politics of literary theory, and intellectual ambition.</p> <p>It also offers a perfect gloss on the old adage that academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. I strongly suspect that the writers of The Chair had Devereaux in mind while creating the similarly hapless Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass).</p> <h2>2. John Williams, Stoner (1965)</h2> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428161/original/file-20211025-13-1glczfs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428161/original/file-20211025-13-1glczfs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> </p> <p>John Williams may well have written the most moving novel ever to be set in an English department.</p> <p>In understated, elegiac prose, Williams gives us the tragic life story of William Stoner, an obscure English professor at the University of Missouri, who enters as an agriculture student but develops a lifelong passion for literature. He lives his entire life against the backdrop of the university, and all of his significant relationships are found within the English department.</p> <p>While Stoner’s contributions to the field seem middling to his colleagues, he inspires generations of students with his generous and rigorous teaching. His personal life may well be a kind of tragedy, but he finds redemption in his teaching and research, and a true home in the department.</p> <p>Williams gives us an example of the English department novel at its most existential and weighty, one beloved of readers inside and outside the academy.</p> <h2>3. Mary McCarthy, The Groves of Academe (1952)</h2> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428163/original/file-20211025-27-16tzpl7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428163/original/file-20211025-27-16tzpl7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> </p> <p>McCarthy’s novel takes us back to comedy once again, mining the same territory as The Chair and Straight Man but written well in advance of either. Drawing on her own experiences at Bard College and elsewhere, McCarthy gives us a farce with a serious political edge. Set at the fictional Jocelyn College, the novel centres on Henry Mulcahy, an expert on James Joyce who learns he has been let go, seemingly without cause.</p> <p>As he fights to save his position, McCarthy shows us the subtle and shifting nature of allegiances within the English departments she knew firsthand, as well as the petty disputes and lurid scandals they can harbour. She pulls no punches, laying bare the gossip, naked careerism, and backstabbing that even seemingly mild-mannered English academics are capable of.</p> <p>The novel also gives us a classic bait-and-switch. The central character, Mulcahy, whom we initially see as sympathetic and unfairly mistreated, slowly comes into focus as manipulative and profoundly unlikable. As we begin to see the central events from the perspective of once minor characters, the truth is revealed, and McCarthy skillfully shows us the mistakes of our earlier judgments.</p> <h2>4. Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety (1987)</h2> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428164/original/file-20211025-15-1u6vbym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/428164/original/file-20211025-15-1u6vbym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> </p> <p>This wise and moving novel explores the lifelong friendship between two couples, Larry and Sally Morgan and Sid and Charity Lang. Sid and Larry are English professors in Madison, Wisconsin, and the novel follows them as they chase literary ambitions while also managing substantial teaching duties.</p> <p>Both are striving for tenure and are forced to negotiate complicated faculty politics. Ultimately, this is a novel about “quiet lives,” as the narrator tells us. Its great themes are friendship, marriage, and the nature of love.</p> <p>And while the English department often fades into the background as Stegner explores other aspects of his characters’ lives, its politics are never far away. Sid and Larry are often concerned with the petty machinations of their academic colleagues, and Crossing to Safety includes many details that still resonate with life at a university today. Stegner’s novel also offers a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of literary studies from the 1930s to the 1970s.</p> <p>Of course, there are many other novels within this sub-genre, including David Lodge’s beloved campus trilogy, as well as novels by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pnin">Vladimir Nabokov</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace">J.M. Coetzee</a>, and others. While eating chocolate and sunbathing wouldn’t necessarily make for interesting fiction, life in an English department, it seems, certainly does.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170110/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lucas-thompson-1261087">Lucas Thompson</a>, Lecturer, Department of English, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-sydney-841">University of Sydney</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/liked-netflixs-the-chair-here-are-4-moving-funny-novels-set-in-english-departments-170110">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Netflix</em></p>

TV

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Dolly Parton and James Patterson to release a novel

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">From singing hit country songs to contributing to COVID-19 vaccine research, Dolly Parton has a diversified set of skills.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In her latest venture, the songstress has teamed up with bestselling author James Patterson to pen her first-ever fiction novel, due to be released on March 7, 2022.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The novel, </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Run, Rose, Run</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, is a thriller that follows a young woman on the run who moves to Nashville to pursue her dreams as a singer-songwriter and will do anything it takes to survive.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When she announced her debut novel, the star shared a photo of herself with the legendary novelist, as well as a picture of the book’s front cover.</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CScLi_DLNIH/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CScLi_DLNIH/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I cannot be more excited about the release of my very first novel #RunRoseRun with @jamespattersonbooks,” she captioned the post.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Alongside the novel, Dolly plans to release a companion LP of new music based on the characters and situations in the novel.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I hope you enjoy the book and the songs as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together,” she concluded.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Just two days before making the announcement on social media, Dolly hinted at the idea on Book Lovers Day, disclosing her dream of writing her own novel.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The seeds of dreams are often found in books, and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world,” she captioned a retro snap of herself holding a book.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“I dream of writing my own novel one day 😉”.</span></p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CSW-D-JLob_/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CSW-D-JLob_/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank">A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Previously, Dolly has written autobiographical books, including </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which was released last year.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The famed singer has also started a weekly YouTube series called </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Goodnight with Dolly</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, where she reads children’s books for kids who are stuck at home and bored during the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p> <p><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/james-patterson/run-rose-run/9780759554375/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Run, Rose, Run</span></a></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is now available to preorder from </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.jamespatterson.com/titles/james-patterson/run-rose-run/9780759554344/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Patterson’s website</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, as well as other bookstores.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Image: Dolly Parton / Instagram</span></p>

Books

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Fergie opens up on two monumental milestones

<p>Sarah Ferguson has opened up to <em>Sunrise</em> about two exciting milestones she has reached in her life.</p> <p>The Duchess of York has become a grandmother with the birth of <span>her and ex Prince Andrew’s first grandchild, all while planning the release of her debut novel. </span></p> <p><span>Fergie's youngest daughter, Princess Eugenie, recently made the duchess and Prince Andrew grandparents with the birth of her son named August. </span></p> <p><span><img style="width: 474.6192893401015px; height: 500px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7842944/princess-eugiene.png" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/85ad51845e8f4eebbe4bfa66f3a70d3d" /></span></p> <p><span><em>Image credit: Instagram</em></span></p> <p><span>She told the <em>Sunrise</em> hosts that after raising two daughters, having a baby boy in the family is a new and welcome challenge. </span></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">“I had two girls and now I’ve got to get into diggers, tractors, trains - and the Barbie dolls have got to go,” she said.</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">“But, if he suddenly decides he wants Barbie dolls, Barbie dolls he gets!"</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">Fergie and Prince Andrew have co-parented their daughters since their split in 1991 after 5 years of marriage. </p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">She told Sunrise that she is still close with her ex-husband, putting the strength and confidence of her two children down to “good co-parenting.”</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">“I think the best thing I teach my girls is that you just keep being with the integrity of goodness, kindness, of humour, of being brave enough,” she explained.</p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020"><img style="width: 500px; height: 499.1525423728813px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7842943/fergie-book.png" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/4f27f1555f9340548ca6f702ba189cad" /></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020"><em>Image credit: Instagram</em></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">Sarah also spoke of her new book, <em>Her Heart for a Compass</em>, which is the Duchess' debut novel after writing 38 children's books. </p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020">Her novel <span>tells the story of a young noblewoman, Lady Margaret, who is expected to get married but instead chooses to follow her heart in Victorian England.</span></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020"><span>She discussed her journey of self-refection during the writing process, </span>saying, <span>“A lot of my journeys are coming through the voice of Lady Margaret in this book - that is strong, rebellious, dealing with adversity.”</span></p> <p class="css-1316j2p-StyledParagraph e4e0a020"><em>Image credits: Getty Images/Instagram @sarahferguson15</em></p>

Family & Pets

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John le Carré’s final novel set to be published

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">John le Carré’s final novel will be posthumously published this October by publisher Viking.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Le Carré’s final novel, </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Silverview</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, was completed prior to his death in December 2020 and the release has the author’s full blessing.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The author, best known for his espionage thrillers like </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, passed away of pneumonia aged 89. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before his death, le Carré finished the manuscript that would become </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Silverview</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and had been writing two other books - </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Legacy of Spies</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Agent Running in the Field</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> - which were unfinished.</span></p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Silverview</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> follows bookshop owner Julian Lawndsley, who becomes the centre of an investigation into an intelligence leak by a London spy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The novel is set to be published in Australia on October 14, 2021, in the same week as le Carré’s 90th birthday.</span></p>

Books

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If you can read this headline, you can read a novel. Here’s how to ignore your phone and just do it

<p>Public anxiety about the capacity of digital-age children and young adults to read anything longer than a screen grab has come to feel like moral panic. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest we must take such unease seriously.</p> <p>In 2016, the US National Endowment for the Arts reported the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/07/the-long-steady-decline-of-literary-reading/">proportion of American adults</a> who read at least one novel in 2015 had dropped to 43.1% from 56.9% in 1982.</p> <p>In 2018, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-it-matters-that-teens-are-reading-less-99281">US academic reported</a> that in 1980, 60% of 18-year-old school students read a book, newspaper or magazine every day that wasn’t assigned for school. By 2016, the number had plummeted to 16%.</p> <p>Those same 12th graders reported spending “six hours a day texting, on social media and online”.</p> <p>American literacy expert and neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf describes the threat screen reading poses to our capacity for “the slower cognitive processes such as critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that are all part of deep reading”.</p> <p>She <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/386632978/Excerpt-from-Reader-Come-Home-by-Maryanne-Wolf">asks</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>Will the mix of continuously stimulating distractions of children’s attention and immediate access to multiple sources of information give young readers less incentive either to build their own storehouses of knowledge or to think critically for themselves?</p> </blockquote> <p>But rather than taking up defensive positions on either side of the digital-analogue reading divide, Wolf encourages us to embrace both. As parents and teachers we can help our children develop a <a href="https://now.tufts.edu/articles/slow-down-reader">bi-literate reading brain</a>. There are several ways we can do this.</p> <p><strong>Reading pathways</strong></p> <p>Reading is a learned skill that <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71cf/5d3dd4a5037003f0bca787874f2d68077cf9.pdf">requires the development</a> of particular neural networks. And different reading platforms encourage the development of different aspects of those networks.</p> <p>Screen-reading children, immersed from toddlerhood in the pleasures and instant gratification of skimming, clicking and linking, develop cognitive skills that make them adept power browsers, good at the useful ability to scan for information and analyse data.</p> <p>But Wolf suggests this kind of reading “can short-circuit the development of the slower, more cognitively demanding comprehension processes that go into the formation of deep reading and deep thinking.”</p> <p>Unless the cognitive skills required for deep reading are similarly developed and nurtured, new generations of readers – distracted by the ready availability of digital information – may not learn to venture beyond the shallows of the reading experience.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309816/original/file-20200114-103966-4rr4lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309816/original/file-20200114-103966-4rr4lz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">We can help children gain a love of reading on paper from an early age.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></p> <p>Along with others concerned with early childhood education Wolf advises encouraging paper literacy from infancy. She doesn’t recommend forbidding devices. Instead we should regularly turn them off and make the time and space to read books on paper with children.</p> <p>We can model our own reading practices by setting aside our own smart phones to lose ourselves in a book.</p> <p>But how can secondary and tertiary teachers help inexperienced readers? The problem is likely to be aliteracy, meaning students can read but they choose not to because they don’t see it to be important for learning. And because they haven’t read much, it’s hard work. The problem can seem intractable. But it can be done.</p> <p><strong>Turn off the phone and read</strong></p> <p>My first venture into helping tertiary students read better was a 2011-2013 <a href="https://ltr.edu.au/resources/CG10_1566_Kennedy_Toolkit_2013.pdf">cross-university government-funded project</a> that set out to foster what we termed “reading resilience”. We found if students were persuaded to prioritise reading as they did a test or an essay, they would invest the time to get into the zone that is the other world of the text.</p> <p>We complemented complex texts with a guide that encouraged students to think critically as they read and to keep going when the language seemed impenetrable, the narrative incomprehensible (or dull) and the length endless. Or when the siren call of the smart phone became irresistible.</p> <p>They experimented with switching off their devices for blocks of two hours while they simply read. And they did read.</p> <p>Students prioritised this difficult work because we rewarded pre-class reading with marks. Some classes uploaded one-page, carefully argued responses; others answered complex feedback-rich quizzes.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309826/original/file-20200114-103982-1pgksj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309826/original/file-20200114-103982-1pgksj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a> <span class="caption">Can you ignore your phone for two hours and keep reading?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></p> <p>I surveyed a large first-year introduction to literary studies at the University of Queensland in 2013 before testing a version of the same “reading resilience” course in 2014. The rise in reading rates was exponential.</p> <p>The number of students who completed all ten primary texts (including the poem Beowulf and Toni Morrison’s Beloved) more than tripled, and the number who completed the ten accompanying secondary texts (selected chapters from an <a href="http://site.iugaza.edu.ps/ahabeeb/files/2012/02/An_Introduction_to_Literature__Criticism_and_Theory.pdf">introduction to literary theory and criticism</a>) went up by more than six times.</p> <p>Reported student satisfaction for this course from 2008 to 2012 had ranged between 64% and 75%. Once reading resilience was introduced, many complained about the reading load yet the level of overall satisfaction jumped to 86%.</p> <p><strong>We can all do it</strong></p> <p>It’s not just readers raised in a digital-age who have difficulty with long-form text. Have you have lost the skill of deep reading? Are you finding it increasingly difficult to stay with, say, a literary novel? You are not alone.</p> <p>Wolf, who despite having two degrees in literature, confesses to the shocking discovery that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/27/17787916/reader-come-home-maryanne-wolf-neuroscience-brain-changes">recently she found herself</a> struggling to stick with a beloved Herman Hesse novel.</p> <p> </p> <p>We too can switch off our devices and set aside a space and time to revitalise the neural pathways that once made us immersive readers.</p> <p>As Wolf <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/71cf/5d3dd4a5037003f0bca787874f2d68077cf9.pdf?_ga=2.263432204.1683872892.1573681450-1249221942.1573681450">argues</a>, the skills of “deep reading” that involve “slower, more time-consuming cognitive processes […] are vital for contemplative life”. Deep readers are likely to be more thoughtful members of the community at a time when good citizenship may never have been more important.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116524/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/judith-seaboyer-131588">Judith Seaboyer</a>, Senior Lecturer, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-can-read-this-headline-you-can-read-a-novel-heres-how-to-ignore-your-phone-and-just-do-it-116524">original article</a>.</p>

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Fergie taps into personal lineage for her inspired first novel

<p><span>Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson has a new fictional novel coming to the shelf, which is inspired by her family history.</span><br /><br /><span>The Duchess of York has taken on the challenge of portraying her great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas and is set to be released in August.</span></p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7839480/sarah-ferguson-novel-a-heart-for-the-compass.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/b07cae45e9f24b41b7caf25fc7536780" /><br /><br /><span>The former wife of Prince Andrew has released children's books in the past, but became inspired for her new novel when she was “researching” her ancestry.</span><br /><br /><span>“Digging into the history of the Montagu-Douglas Scotts, I first came across Lady Margaret, who intrigued me because she shared one of my given names,” she said.</span><br /><br /><span>“But although her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, were close friends with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, I was unable to discover much about my namesake’s early life, and so was born the idea which became Her Heart for a Compass.</span><br /><br /><span>“With real historical events and facts to hand, my imagination took over.”<br /><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7839478/sarah-ferguson-novel-a-heart-for-the-compass-2.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/e8539deadd15429689a5a634e773b11f" /></span><br /><br /><span>The 61-year-old went on to say: “I invented a history for her that incorporated real people and events, including some of my other ancestors.</span><br /><br /><span>“I created a friendship between my heroine and Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s sixth child, and I drew on many parallels from my life for Lady Margaret’s journey.</span><br /><br /><span>“I have long held a passion for historical research and telling the stories of strong women in history through film and television.</span><br /><br /><span>“I am proud to bring my personal brand of historical fiction to the publishing world.”</span><br /><br /><span>Despite Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson divorcing in 1996, the pair still remain great friends and live together at the Royal Lodge in London.</span></p>

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5 must-read novels on the environment and climate crisis

<p>Since the start of <a href="https://theconversation.com/volunteering-mutual-aid-and-lockdown-has-shifted-our-sense-of-happiness-141352">lockdown</a>, more of us have taken to our bicycles, grown our own vegetables and baked our own bread. So it’s not surprising it has been suggested we should use this experience to rethink our approach to the climate crisis.</p> <p>Reading some environmental literature – sometimes called “eco-literature” – can also give us the opportunity to think about the world around us in different ways.</p> <p>Eco-literature, has a long literary tradition that dates back to the writings of 19th-century <a href="https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0206.xml">English romantic poets and US authors</a>. And the growing awareness of climate change has accelerated the development of environmental writings.</p> <p><a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Animals-People/Indra-Sinha/9781416578796"><em><strong>Animal’s People</strong> </em></a></p> <p><strong>by Indra Sinha</strong></p> <p>Indra Sinha’s <em>Animal’s People</em>, looks at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/dec/08/bhopals-tragedy-has-not-stopped-the-urban-disaster-still-claiming-lives-35-years-on">Bhopal gas explosion</a> in India – one of the most horrific environmental disasters of the 20th-century. A poisonous gas leak from a US-owned pesticide plant killed several thousand people and injured more than half a million.</p> <p>The main character in the novel, Animal, is a 19-year-old orphaned boy who survives the explosion with a deformed body. This means he must “crawl like a dog on all fours”. Animal does not hate his body, but embraces his animistic identity – offering an unconventional <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195394429.001.0001/acprof-9780195394429-chapter-11">non-human perspective</a>.</p> <p>With this wounded “human-animal” figure, Sinha puts forward his critique of India’s postcolonial conditions and demonstrates how Western capitalist domination continues to damage people and the environment in contemporary postcolonial society.</p> <p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/330739/my-year-of-meats-by-ruth-ozeki/9780140280463/readers-guide/"><em><strong>My Year of Meats</strong></em></a></p> <p><strong>by Ruth Ozeki</strong></p> <p>Ruth Ozeki’s novel intermingles themes such as motherhood, environmental justice and <a href="http://dspace.unive.it/handle/10579/15557">ecological practice</a> to explore the appalling use of growth hormones in the US meat industry from a feminist ecocritical perspective.</p> <p>The novel employs <a href="https://academic.oup.com/isle/article/24/3/457/4036100">a “documentary” narrative mode</a> and begins with a TV cooking show – sponsored by a meat company. While filming the show, Jane Takagi-Little, the director, encounters a vegetarian lesbian couple who reveal the ugly truth about the use of growth hormones within the livestock industry. The encounter motivates Jane to undertake a documentary project to uncover how growth hormones poison women’s bodies.</p> <p> </p> <p>Through a deliberate choice to make all her main characters female, Ozeki draws her readers’ attention to nonconforming, atypical female figures who rebel against social or cultural norms inherent in patriarchal capitalist society.</p> <p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/103/1031506/disgrace/9780099540984.html"><em><strong>Disgrace</strong> </em></a></p> <p><strong>by J.M. Coetzee</strong></p> <p>In <em>Disgrace</em>, J.M. Coetzee, a celebrated Noble Prize laureate, who is also <a href="https://www.peta.org/blog/nobel-laureate-jm-coetzee-animal-death-camps/">known for his outspoken defence of animal rights</a>, interweaves a brutal dog-killing scene with the gang-rape of a white South African woman by three black men.</p> <p>Praised as one of the South African postcolonial canons, the novel explores complex issues of white supremacy and anticolonial resistance as well as racial and gender violence. It ties these issues with humans’ domination and exploitation of the animals and further challenges our ethical position.</p> <p>The combination of these two acts – the killing of dogs and the rape of a woman – can be read as Coetzee’s ecocritique of the colonial violence against nonhuman beings and the natural environment.</p> <p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/221242/the-man-with-the-compound-eyes-by-wu-ming-yi/"><em><strong>The Man with the Compound Eyes</strong> </em></a></p> <p><strong>by Wu Ming-yi</strong></p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-novels-allow-us-to-imagine-possible-futures-read-these-crucial-seven-124216">Climate fiction</a> or the so-called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/cli-fi-novels-humanise-the-science-of-climate-change-and-leading-authors-are-getting-in-on-the-act-51270">cli-fi</a>” takes on genuine scientific discovery or phenomenon and combines this with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/cli-fi-literary-genre-rises-to-prominence-in-the-shadow-of-climate-change-25686">dystopian or over the top twist</a>. This approach underlines the agency of non-human beings, environments or even phenomena – such as trees, the ocean, or a tsunami.</p> <p>Wu Ming-yi’s novel is composed of four different narratives: a Taiwanese university professor, a boy from the mythical Wayo Wayo island and two other city-dwelling indigenous characters. Their stories are viewed in fragments from the multiple perspectives of the “compound eyes”. At the backdrop is a tsunami which causes <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/">the Great Pacific garbage patch</a> to crash on to the eastern coast of Taiwan and the fictionalised Pacific island of Wayo Wayo that brings together all their stories.</p> <p>Wu blends this unrealistic event with the real-life trash vortex to draw our attention to the severe environmental problems of waste dumping and our unsustainable lifestyles.</p> <p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1115230/the-overstory/9781784708245.html"><em><strong>The Overstory</strong> </em></a></p> <p><strong>by Richard Powers</strong></p> <p><em>The Overstory</em> is praised by critics for its ambition to bring awareness to the life of trees and its advocacy to an <a href="https://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/dipartimenti/DSLCC/documenti/DEP/numeri/n41-42/13_Masiero.pdf">ecocentric way of life</a>. Powers’ novel sets out with nine distinctive characters - which represent the “roots” of trees. Gradually their stories and lives intertwine to form the “trunk”, the “crown” and the “seeds”.</p> <p>One of the characters, Dr Patricia Westerford, publishes a paper showing trees are social beings because they can communicate and warn each other when a foreign intrusion occurs. Her idea, though presented as controversial in the novel, is actually <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/12/peter-wohlleben-man-who-believes-trees-talk-to-each-other">well supported by today’s scientific studies</a>.</p> <p>Despite her groundbreaking work, Dr Westerford ends up taking her own life by drinking poisonous tree extracts at a conference - to make it clear humans can only save trees and the planet by ceasing to exist.</p> <p>These are just a few books with a specific focus on environmental issues – perfect for your <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-things-historical-literature-can-teach-us-about-the-climate-crisis-127762">current reading list</a>. To everyone’s surprise, this global lockdown has given us some eco-benefits, such as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/19/lockdowns-trigger-dramatic-fall-global-carbon-emissions">sudden dip in carbon emissions</a> and the huge decline in our reliance on <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/renewable-power-surges-pandemic-scrambles-global-energy-outlook">traditional fossil fuel energy</a>. Maybe then if we can learn from this experience we can move towards a greener future.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139437/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ti-han-chang-602361">Ti-han Chang</a>, Lecturer in Asia-Pacific Studies, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-central-lancashire-1272">University of Central Lancashire</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-must-read-novels-on-the-environment-and-climate-crisis-139437">original article</a>.</em></p>

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5 novels with a real sense of place to explore from your living room

<p>Everybody knows the concept of “desert island books”, the novels you might pack if you were going to be marooned on a desert island. Thanks to the pandemic, many of us are indeed now marooned, except that instead of lazing on palm-fringed beaches, we’re in lockdown – in urban apartment blocks, suburban terraced houses or village homes.</p> <p>A good book can help us forget about the world around us and also substitute our longing for pastures greener. It can take us from our sofa to the beaches of Thailand (as in Alex Garland’s <em>The Beach</em>) or to the streets of New York (as in Paul Auster’s <em>City of Glass</em>).</p> <p>So, as someone who researches and teaches literature, I’ve chosen five novels that allow me to be elsewhere in my mind, whether that’s a glorious English countryside setting, the streets of a European metropolis, or the urban sprawl of an unnamed Indian city.</p> <p><strong>Kazuo Ishiguro: <em>The Remains of the Day</em></strong></p> <p><em>The Remains of the Day</em> tells the story of Stevens, the aged butler of Darlington Hall, and his ill-judged life choices that saw him being involved, albeit only on the fringes, with British fascism in the interwar years.</p> <p>This allusion to British fascism in particular is something that makes this novel stand out: it is a subject matter not often discussed or even taught.</p> <p>But at the moment, I can particularly take solace in Ishiguro’s beautiful descriptions of the countryside that Stevens – unused to the freedom of travel – encounters during his journey across south-west England:</p> <blockquote> <p>What I saw was principally field upon field rolling off into the far distance. The land rose and fell gently, and the fields were bordered by hedges and trees … It was a fine feeling indeed to be standing up there like that, with the sound of summer all around one and a light breeze on one’s face.</p> </blockquote> <p>As the lockdown drags on, this is a feeling I am longing for.</p> <p><strong>W.G. Sebald: <em>The Emigrants</em></strong></p> <p>This collection of four novellas is predominantly set in England and Germany but also offers glimpses of the US, Egypt, Belgium and Switzerland. Focusing on a different protagonist in each novella, Sebald portrays how the long shadows of the second world war have affected individuals – but also how Germany has engaged with its troubled past.</p> <p>His descriptions of the town of Kissingen’s illuminated spa gardens, with “Chinese lanterns strung across the avenues, shedding colourful magical light” and “the fountains in front of the Regent’s building” jetting “silver and gold alternately” conjure up images of times gone by and a town as yet untroubled by the scourge of antisemitism.</p> <p>Sebald’s narrative is a collage of fiction, biography, autobiography, travel writing and philosophy. His prose is so full of quiet beauty and eloquence that it always helps me forget my surroundings and enter a quiet and contemplative “Sebaldian” space.</p> <p><strong>Patrick Modiano: <em>The Search Warrant</em></strong></p> <p><em>The Search Warrant</em> pieces together the real-life story of Dora Bruder, a young Jewish girl who went missing in Paris in December 1941.</p> <p>Modiano attempts to retrace Dora’s movements across Paris and his book is full of evocative descriptions of quiet squares and bustling streets where she might have spent some time.</p> <blockquote> <p>In comparison with the Avenue de Saint-Mandé, the Avenue Picpus, on the right, is cold and desolate. Treeless, as I remember. Ah, the loneliness of returning on those Sunday evenings.</p> </blockquote> <p>From the first page it is clear that the city of Paris assumes the status of a character – and as readers we can follow the narrator’s (and Dora’s) movements on a map.</p> <p>If we are familiar with Paris, we can picture where they are. By tracing Dora’s possible steps, Modiano evocatively recreates the twilight atmosphere of Paris under occupation.</p> <p><strong>Rohinton Mistry: <em>A Fine Balance</em></strong></p> <p><em>A Fine Balance</em> is a sprawling narrative that takes the reader all the way to the Indian subcontinent.</p> <p>Set initially in 1975 during the emergency government period and then during the chaotic times of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, Mistry’s novel focuses on the lives of four central characters whose lives are on a downward spiral, from poverty to outright destitution and, ultimately, death.</p> <p>Mistry does not whitewash the reality of urban poverty in India. His narrative does not hide away from disease or overcrowded slums with “rough shacks” standing “beyond the railroad fence, alongside a ditch running with raw sewage”. His are not places where we might want to be. But as readers, we become utterly engrossed in his characters’ lives – we hope with them, we fear for them and, at the end, we cry for them.</p> <p><strong>Elena Ferrante: <em>My Brilliant Friend</em></strong></p> <p>Elena Ferrante’s novels take me straight to my favourite city of Napoli. Starting with My Brilliant Friend, the four novels chart the intensive relationship between two girls, Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo, who grow up in a poor neighbourhood in the 1950s.</p> <p>Reading Ferrante’s sprawling narrative conjures up images of Napoli and makes me feel like I am standing in the Piazza del Plebiscito or having an espresso in the historic Caffè Gambrinus. Together with Lenù, I can see Vesuvio across the Bay of Naples, the:</p> <blockquote> <p>delicate pastel-colored shape, at whose base the whitish stones of the city were piled up, with the earth-coloured slice of the Castel dell’Ovo, and the sea.</p> </blockquote> <p>I can feel, hear and smell Napoli around me. Reading about the city might not be as good as being there in person; but, at the moment, it is a close second.</p> <p>Of course, books can’t stop a global pandemic. But, for a short while, they can let us forget the world around us and, instead, transport us to different places, allowing us to at least travel in spirit.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/135367/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/christine-berberich-319477">Christine Berberich</a>, Reader in Literature, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-portsmouth-1302">University of Portsmouth</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-novels-with-a-real-sense-of-place-to-explore-from-your-living-room-135367">original article</a>.</em></p>

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How to learn about love from Mills & Boon novels

<p>“We expect love to be one of our greatest joys. But, in practice, it is one of the most reliable routes to misery,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/10/romantic-realism-the-seven-rules-to-help-you-avoid-divorce">wrote Alain de Botton</a> in a recent article, before informing us that divorce rates <a href="https://theconversation.com/january-divorce-rush-dates-back-to-the-middle-ages-35928">peak post-Christmas</a>.</p> <p>Some have blamed one well-known publisher of romance novels as a reason behind this tidal wave of lost hopes. One scholarly article in the <em>British Medical Journal</em> <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/veteran-bodice-ripper-that-defies-parody-bp625mpml">claimed</a> that Mills &amp; Boon was a contributing factor to divorce, adultery, and unwanted pregnancy.</p> <p>Mills &amp; Boon is over 100-years-old and has an established reputation of supplying escapist romantic fantasies for its predominantly female readership across the globe. But with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I’d like to come out in defence of these romantic novels. Despite their escapist nature, there is a considerable amount of realism contained within their pages.</p> <p>This might seem like a surprising claim. But realism in romance has always been a part of romantic fiction. Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), an early writer of romances, also injected a degree of reality into her novels. While her heroines of sensibility were being wooed from the turrets of their high towers by heroes with appellations such as Orlando and Willoughby, her subsidiary characters faced issues such as extra-marital affairs, unwanted pregnancies and marital rape. As Stuart Curran <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9780230550711">argues</a> of Smith’s works, they record a moment in English fiction where the “intrusion of ‘real life’ into the world of romance marks the beginning of a reconstituted literary realism”.</p> <p>And I reckon that this “literary realism” is equally available, at least in some measure, in many of the romantic novels of Mills &amp; Boon. But how shall we define “realism”? The sceptic’s definition should suffice. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/10/romantic-realism-the-seven-rules-to-help-you-avoid-divorce">De Botton lists</a> seven rules that will allow any reader to develop the emotional skill of romantic realism, and thereby save their marriage.</p> <p><strong>Embracing imperfection</strong></p> <p>First on the list is to “accept perfection is unrealistic”.</p> <p>Now, the heroes of the average Mills &amp; Boon romance, despite appearances on the covers (which generally feature muscular Adonis-like men or heroes who bear a resemblance to popular film stars) are, in fact, very far from perfect. The male lead of Penny Jordan’s <a href="http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=24667"><em>The Most Coveted Prize</em></a> (2011) freely admits this to himself. As the reader is introduced to Kiryl, the narrator informs us that he has “a darkness within him that he had never wholly been able to control. Something of a mental vampire, an echo of himself that, when aroused, could only be calmed by feeding off the emotional pain of others”.</p> <p>It will take the equally far from perfect 19-year-old heroine Alena to save Kiryl from himself and cement their relationship. In order for this to happen, Alena has to accept the reality that Kiryl is not the perfect hero she has constructed him to be within her imagination, saying to him: “I didn’t love you. I loved someone I created inside my own head and heart – someone I now know never existed. That was weak and foolish of me.”</p> <p>Once she has admitted the truth to herself and, in de Botton’s words, “she has grasped the specifics of his imperfections”, she is free to focus on the fact that she loves him anyway, and would rather be with him and his imperfections than spend the rest of her life without him.</p> <p><strong>The art of loving</strong></p> <p>This leads me nicely onto de Botton’s fourth rule of romantic realism, which instructs us to “be ready to love rather than be loved”. Alena – along with countless other Mills &amp; Boon heroines – loves her hero even though she is fully aware of his failings.</p> <p>So the heroines have no issue following de Botton’s advice. But it must be acknowledged that the heroes do have more trouble. Their alpha male status seems to inhibit them from admitting what they perceive as weakness – which for the main part, manifests itself in the form of their vulnerability to the heroine. The final admission of the hero’s undying love for her will almost destroy him.</p> <p>But, as Kiryl admits, “a man can only lie to himself for so long”, and despite Jordan reducing him to a shadow of himself – as she does with so many of her heroes – it will become clear that the hero of the tale can only be saved by embracing both the heroine and his love for her.</p> <p><strong>But it’s all about the sex, right?</strong></p> <p>One of the criticisms which have been levelled at Mills &amp; Boon romantic novels over the years is the inclusion of scenes of an explicit nature. How realistic is the invariably great sex the average Mills &amp; Boon heroine can anticipate with her hero?</p> <p>As de Botton observes, one of the frequent failings in relationships is that we fail to “understand that sex and love, do and don’t, belong together … the general view expects that love and sex will be aligned. But in truth, they won’t stay so beyond a few months or, at best, one or two years”.</p> <p>Not many Mills &amp; Boons address this point. But some do. In another sample from her corpus, Jordan does attempt to hint that the “other key concerns” that de Botton highlights such as “companionship, administration, another generation” do have an impact on sex in relationships. In her 1982 novel, <a href="https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/p38167/blackmail.htm"><em>Blackmail</em></a>, the heroine, Lee, is forced to take a break in sexual relations with her husband Gilles because the birth of her son “had not been an easy one”.</p> <p>And akin to her literary ancestor, Charlotte Smith, Jordan also featured many older heroines. In her novel from 1989, <em><a href="https://www.millsandboon.co.uk/p29067/a-rekindled-passion.htm">A Rekindled Passion</a></em>, for example, the heroine, Kate, is just shy of 40. Kate has spent all of her adult life as a single mother, having fallen pregnant at age 16. When the baby’s father, Joss, reappears, Kate turns down his offer of sex after he tells her he wants her, saying: “It wouldn’t be sensible. We’d both regret it.”</p> <p>Both Kate and Lee love their heroes, but their love is not aligned with sex. The heroines and heroes reach their happy endings in these novels, because all parties accept this.</p> <p>Harlequin Mills &amp; Boon, as a publisher, openly retails their fiction as escapism. But like all great romantic fiction, from its earliest days to contemporary times, these novels do address realistic issues which people face every day in their relationships.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71530/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/valerie-derbyshire-331457">Valerie Derbyshire</a>, Doctoral Researcher, School of English, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-sheffield-1147">University of Sheffield</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-learn-about-love-from-mills-and-boon-novels-71530">original article</a>.</em></p>

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How I wrote my first novel at 50

<p>Australian author<span> </span><span>Nigel Bartlett</span> is living proof that life really can start at 50 with the launch of his first novel<span> </span><span><em>King of the Road</em></span><em>.</em></p> <p><strong>Q. How long had you wanted to write a novel?</strong><br />I’d held that dream for 28 years. I first voiced it when I was 22 and was working in a job packing books in a warehouse after finishing university. Then my lost dream started raising its head again in my 30s, but I found it a struggle to do anything about it.</p> <p>I still thought writers only wrote when inspiration struck, or when time suddenly appeared in their lives. When I finally listened to how writers worked, and I discovered from doing a course at the Writers’ Studio in Sydney that you need to make writing a discipline, I was finally able to start putting words on paper in a consistent fashion.</p> <p><strong>Q. How did it feel when your first novel was published on your 50th birthday?</strong><br />It was beyond my wildest dreams when Vintage/Random House said they wanted to publish<span> </span><span><em>King of the Road</em></span>. The fact that the book was released on my 50th birthday seemed very significant and was a very happy coincidence.</p> <p>I’ve always found the 'zero' birthdays have heralded big changes giving me a new lease of life each time. Seeing<span> </span><em>King of the Road</em><span> </span>in print was the culmination of a lifelong dream.</p> <p>I’d once thought I couldn’t write a book until I retired and had the time available, so to do it while working full-time and to celebrate that achievement on this big milestone birthday felt wonderful. I celebrated with a book launch! A huge number of people turned up, and Gleebooks in Glebe, Sydney sold 100 copies of <em>King of the Road</em> that afternoon, which felt fantastic. I didn’t need a birthday party after that.</p> <p><strong>Q. Why did you decide to write a crime thriller?</strong><br />Initially, I didn’t decide to write a crime thriller at all. But the novel took that turn when I was halfway through the first draft of what I’d thought would be just a quiet family drama. The story was boring, so I had to make something happen. In every subsequent draft I rewrote the story with "crime fiction" firmly planted on my mind. I threw out more than 50,000 words of that first draft. When the book came out and people were reading it in a week, or just a couple of days, or in some cases in one night flat, and they were telling me they couldn’t put it down, I thought, "It really is a crime thriller."</p> <p><strong>Q. How hard it was to write your novel?</strong><br />At times it felt incredibly hard. Finding time to write was very difficult, having no idea where the story was going in the early and middle stages, being wracked by self-doubt and really just not knowing if the whole enterprise would ever amount to anything – living with all those frustrations and anxieties can feel like a huge burden. Following a dream or passion is such a strange thing. How do you know how far to pursue it before giving up?</p> <p>I decided to keep plodding away and to let go of the eventual result as much as possible. I tried to gain encouragement from listening to other writers speaking about how they worked. I tried to make writing as 'social' as possible (because it's generally so solitary) by joining a writing group, going to writing events, catching up with writer friends and so on, and I tried to ignore negative voices, either from other people or in my own head.</p> <p>My process was to write the first draft from start to finish, not knowing where the story was going or how it would end. For the second draft, when I knew this was a crime story, I wrote a more detailed plot outline and followed that. For the third and fourth drafts, I scratched out certain sections and added in new ones. For the fifth and sixth drafts I tried to make sure I'd left no stone unturned, in terms of making sure everything tied up, all the connections between different events were clear and that any plot holes had been closed.</p> <p><strong>Q. How has it felt getting such a great response?</strong><br />For several weeks I found it hard to get to sleep and kept waking early – I had so much adrenaline. I kept receiving messages and emails from people who loved the book. I took screen shots of them all so that I’d never forget them.</p> <p><em>King of the Road</em><span> </span>ended up being reviewed by every major newspaper in Australia and lots of magazines, and I’m very grateful for all the wonderful words said about it. I feel as if all that time I spent on the book was worthwhile, and that I can actually do that thing I really wasn’t sure I could do – I can write. In many other ways, though, life is no different.</p> <p><strong>Q. How do you look ahead to your next 50 years?</strong><br />Well, I now know that I’m on the right path with being a writer. I no longer have to worry about whether that’s the 'right' thing for me to do. I just have to make sure I can still do it while also making enough of a living to provide for my future.</p> <p>I still have a day job (as a freelance writer and sub-editor for magazines and websites), but I would love to get to the point where I can earn a decent living just from novel-writing.</p> <p><strong>Q. Writing is a sedentary job. How do you take care of yourself?</strong><br />I go to the gym each morning before work, five days a week, and I go for a gentle bike ride every Saturday. Exercise is vital for me – for my mental and physical health, and for how I feel about myself.</p> <p>I also try to eat healthily Monday to Friday, allowing myself to eat what I want on Friday and Saturday evenings. It’s something I’ve learnt works for me – fruit, veg, protein, good carbs, saving refined sugar and fatty foods for weekend treats.</p> <p>I had bladder cancer when I was 40 and am lucky to be alive (it was caught early), so I know how important health is. I place it ahead of all else.</p> <p><strong>Q. What advice would you have for others who have a dream like yours?</strong><br />You have to be pragmatic. I’m not a believer in giving up everything else to follow my dream. I wanted to be a published author and I needed to earn a living and I wanted to be fit and healthy and I wanted to spend time with family and friends. So that all requires balance.</p> <p>If I’d chucked in my job, or locked myself away without seeing anyone, or stopped exercising and eating healthy foods, I would have been penniless, lonely and probably at death’s door.</p> <p>However, you do have to prioritise. I also wanted to be in a choir that I loved, but I gave it up as it took up too much of my spare time. I didn’t want my mental energy to be taken up by work stress, so I now work at a lower level of seniority than I could do.</p> <p>I knew I needed to carve out time in my life for writing, so I say no to social engagements on Sundays. It’s the only way I can find time to write. Is it worth it? For me, yes. I would be seriously annoyed with myself if, when I was on my deathbed, I hadn’t tried as hard as I could to be a published author.</p> <p><strong>Q. How many hours a week do you write?</strong><br />On Sundays I don’t leave the flat until the evening, I switch off the phone and I use a<span> </span><span>program</span><span> </span>that blocks computer access to the internet and email for however long I tell it to. I don’t try to write a set number of words, because sometimes it can be a question of plotting or editing, but there are days when I think, "If I can get to 2,000 words, I’ll be happy." Sometimes I write more, other times I write less. For me, writing a book is a very slow process.</p> <p>I also jot down ideas constantly in a notebook or on my phone, or I go through spells of writing for half an hour a day, which is all the time I can afford during the week. But Sundays are usually my sacred writing days. I also took time off work for a few weeks occasionally when I was working on<span> </span><em>King of the Road</em><span> </span>at the later stages.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"> <p dir="ltr">It doesn't get better than this: a great review in the <a href="https://twitter.com/dailytelegraph?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dailytelegraph</a>. Thank you! <a href="http://t.co/ZHkBMdKYpi">pic.twitter.com/ZHkBMdKYpi</a></p> — Nigel Bartlett (@Nigel__Bartlett) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel__Bartlett/status/565308641730125825?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">11 February 2015</a></blockquote> <p><strong>Q. What has the highlight been?</strong><br />Seeing glowing reviews appear in<span> </span><em>Spectrum</em><span> </span>(in the<span> </span><em>Sydney Morning Herald</em><span> </span>and the<span> </span><em>Age)</em><span> </span>and<span> </span><em>The Australian </em>were definitely high points! The biggest kick, though, was seeing the first tweet from a total stranger before the book had even gone on sale – a magazine reviewer had seen an early copy and tweeted that she loved it, describing it as "a ripper of a read".</p> <p>That was the first inkling I had that<span> </span><em>King of the Road</em><span> </span>had done what I’d hoped it would: excite readers.</p> <p>I’m now working on my next novel. At this stage it involves some of the characters from<span> </span><em>King of the Road </em>(David, Matty and one of the police officers, Fahd), which is exciting as I love all three of those guys and want to see where they’ll go to next.</p> <p>Have you always wanted to write a book? Join our conversation in the comments below.</p> <p><em>Republished with permission of <span><a href="https://www.wyza.com.au/articles/entertainment/how-i-wrote-my-first-novel-at-50.aspx">Wyza.com.au</a></span>.</em></p>

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The secret to writing a killer crime novel

<p>Celebrated Aussie crime writer Michael Robotham says the key to making readers care is creating characters that readers feel deeply about and therefore are willing to laugh and cry with. He shares his secret to his success here.</p> <p>Readers are certainly doing this alongside the character Joe O’Laughlin in Robotham’s latest psychological thriller,<span> </span><span><em>Close Your Eyes.</em></span></p> <p>“The seeds for<span> </span><em>Close Your Eyes</em><span> </span>came from a real life case 20 years ago – an unsolved murder in the UK in 1995,” said Robotham.</p> <p>“It opens with the murder of a mother and teenage daughter in a farmhouse in North Somerset and the daughter is left lying like Sleeping Beauty in an upstairs bedroom and the mother suffers the most savage attack imaginable. That’s the initial mystery the police have when they call in Joe O’Laughlin to look at the crime scene. Why does one death look almost reverential and full of love and the other is typified by such anger?”</p> <p>Despite being a high octane and suspenseful crime novel, Robotham revealed<em><span> </span>Close Your Eyes</em><span> </span>is a story fundamentally about family and fatherhood. As a father himself, Robotham admits he often wonders whether he is doing a good job.</p> <p>The novel’s protagonist, clinical psychologist Joe O’Laughlin, is no different. The book also goes to the heart of O’Laughlin’s relationship with his estranged wife, with an ending that critics are dubbing ‘tissue-shredding’.</p> <p>“I must say<span> </span><em>Close Your Eyes</em><span> </span>was a difficult book to write because it had been a couple of years since Joe O’Laughlin had been around. But I think [readers and critics] embraced the fact that he was back and to this date I can’t think of one negative review or comment that I’ve received. It’s been incredibly humbling.”</p> <p><strong>How he became a writer</strong><br />Michael Robotham grew up in a small country town in New South Wales. He always wanted to be a writer, but felt he didn’t have anything to write about. Working as a journalist for many years, he said, was extremely valuable at the most basic level because it allowed him to gather material.</p> <p>“Police rounds at 3am in the morning involved dealing with ... pimps, prostitutes, junkies and dealers and the whole criminal mileau, all of which gave me a rich understanding of the way police investigate crime and I suppose I got a glimpse of the underbelly,” said Robotham.</p> <p>"Society gets the monsters it deserves, they’re created by circumstances."</p> <p>Working with Paul Britton, a forensic psychologist and one of the pioneers of offender profiling in the UK, became a major turning point for Robotham.</p> <p>“What I uncovered is that there is no such thing as black and white, no one is born evil. Society gets the monsters it deserves, they’re created by circumstances. And when you unpack the backgrounds behind most of the perpetrators of the most terrible crimes, you discover lives of outrageous neglect and abuse and all of those things feed in to the sort of books that I write,” he says.</p> <p>Robotham said he has always been fascinated by the psychology of crime. “Rather than the ‘what’, the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ of a crime, I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘why’ – exactly what motivates someone to commit a terrible deed. Not just the psychology of the perpetrator but also how it impacts on the victim and the victim’s family and community at large.”</p> <p><strong>Writing style</strong><span> </span><br />Robotham stressed that while plot is important, people really come back to books for the characters. “In writing fiction I try to create characters that are as real to me as any of the real people I’ve ever worked with,” he said.</p> <p>“I love Joe O’Laughlin as a character. He is probably the most autobiographical in the fact that he’s about my age, I have three daughters while he has two, and we likely have a similar outlook on life.</p> <p>“When I reach a point in the writing where it’s incredibly tense, I struggle to sleep. I cling to that same cliff face and wonder whether they’re going to survive or not...</p> <p>“But I liken writing a first person novel to spending a year in a two-man tent with your very best friend. After that year you might still love your friend dearly but you do want some time on your own or with someone new.”</p> <p>To keep his books exciting (for both himself and the reader) and to ensure he doesn’t fall into predictable patterns of writing, Robotham doesn’t plot books in advance.</p> <p>“When I reach a point in the writing where it’s incredibly tense, I struggle to sleep. I cling to that same cliff face and wonder whether they’re going to survive or not ... and I figure if I don’t see the twist coming then the reader won’t see the twist coming.”</p> <p>Robotham said writing crime novels is often similar to the work of a magician.</p> <p>“At times, magicians want you to look at one hand while they’re doing something with the other hand. It’s about planting clues that are in plain sight but you plant them in such a ways that people register them but don’t realise they’re important.”</p> <p>The wordsmith explains part of this writing ability comes from reading and following the rules, but much of it – like riding a bike – comes through practice. “I can’t tell someone what paragraph to put in front of another or what word to put next. It’s just something that you feel inside when you’re writing.”</p> <p>What is your favourite crime novel? Join the conversation.</p> <p><em>Written by Greta Mayr. Republished with permission of <span><a href="https://www.wyza.com.au/articles/entertainment/author-interview-australian-crime-writer-michael-robotham.aspx">Wyza.com.au</a></span>.</em></p>

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Man returns library book after 84 years

<p>Eighty-four years ago, a library book was borrowed by an 11-year-old girl.</p> <p>A few days ago, it was returned to the Shreve Memorial Library in Louisiana, USA, by her adult son.</p> <p>Borrowed by his mother when she was a child, the man came across the book – which a library official described as “in pretty rough shape” –whilst cleaning the house.</p> <p><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshrevememorial%2Fposts%2F1866746696693950&amp;width=500" width="500" height="707" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></p> <p>The novel, <em>Spoon River Anthology</em>, is a book of free verse by Edgar Lee Masters, with each poem written in the perspective of a dead person within the fictional town.</p> <p>An image of the old book was posted on the library’s Facebook page along with the statement: “We thought that the title was appropriately spooky to turn up again after all this time, right around Halloween.”</p> <p>According to the rules listed in the book, titles would be charged 5 cents each day the work is overdue. Stroud and his family calculated the cost of the fine which exceeded $1500. The library refrained the son from the charge.</p> <p>Although, in honour of his mother the Stroud family paid the $1542.65 fine in the form of a donation, “My brother and sisters determined (paying the fine) would be a befitting honour to my mum, and also we have an aunt who’s a librarian.” Robert Stroud shared.</p> <p><iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshrevememorial%2Fphotos%2Fa.816859941682636%2F1896284213740198%2F%3Ftype%3D3&amp;width=500" width="500" height="586" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe> </p> <p>He goes on to state, “My mum had a great sense of humour, I think she would see a lot of levity in this.”</p> <p>Shreve Memorial Library Executive Director, John Tuggle, joked “What I’m going to use it for is to remind all of our patrons that it’s never, ever too late to return an overdue book,” he hopes this story can become a funny lesson to others in the future.</p> <p> </p>

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6 of our favourite post-apocalyptic novels

<p>Sometimes, the story really gets going after the world ends. Events like a zombie apocalypse, extinction-level disease, or the dreaded nuclear war are perfect kicking off points for some of literature’s best tales. Today, we’re recommending some of our favourite post-apocalyptic novels – who knows, maybe they’ll make you feel better about the current state of the world.</p> <p><strong>1. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Y: The Last Man</span></em> by Brian K. Vaughan &amp; Pia Guerra</strong></p> <p>We’re kicking things off with a great way to ease into this genre – a graphic novel series. <em>Y: The Last Man</em> follows the story of Yorick Brown – the only man on Earth to have survived the simultaneous death of every other male. With his pet monkey, Ampersand, Yorick sets out to find his mother and sister on the other side of the country. So begins the 3-time Eisner Award-winning (The Oscars of comics) series that will have you on the edge of your seat for 60 issues. So get comfortable, and get familiar with <em>Y: The Last Man</em>.</p> <p><strong>2. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Oryx and Crake</span></em> by Margaret Atwood</strong></p> <p>Margaret Atwood has a talent for writing haunting, beautiful, creepy dystopian novels (see: <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>), and this kick-off to a three-part series is no exception. Told from the perspective of “Snowman” (real name Jimmy), <em>Oryx and Crake</em> introduces us to a world full of primitive, human-like creatures who may or may not be genetically engineered humans.</p> <p><strong>3. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Road</span></em> by Cormac McCarthy</strong></p> <p><em>The Road</em> is essential reading for anyone wanting to delve into the world of post-apocalyptic literature. It’s a bleak, minimalist story set in the cold of a nuclear winter. The book follows a father and son, who are journeying towards the coast, with no clear idea of what comes once they get there. This one is haunting, and won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.</p> <p><strong>4. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Wool</span></em> by Hugh Howey</strong></p> <p>In the future, a group of humans has retreated below the surface of the planet to escape deadly toxicity. Within a giant silo, these people have formed a regulated society, wary of breaking the rules in place to protect. Things get really interesting, however, when Sheriff Holston, traditionally a lover of the rules he upholds, breaks rule number one by asking to go outside.</p> <p><strong>5. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">World War Z</span></em> by Max Brooks</strong></p> <p>Forget the movie (if you saw it), <em>World War Z</em> bears little resemblance to its cinematic counterpart beyond a shared inciting incident. The story is told through first-person interviews and accounts of events that happened after a zombie outbreak. If you want a treat, listen to the audiobook, which features several familiar voices reading for the numerous characters.</p> <p><strong>6. <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Alas, Babylon</span> </em>by Pat Frank</strong></p> <p>Beatles fans may recognise this title as the book given to John Lennon in 1965 which reportedly fuelled his anti-war passions. The book tells of the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust which has decimated the USA, killing millions of people in an instant. However, one town in Florida has, for whatever reason, remained unaffected.</p> <p>What’s your favourite post-apocalyptic story?</p>

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The top classic romance novels of all time

<p>These timeless love stories have pulled countless hopeless romantic’s heartstrings over the years. How many have you read?</p> <p><strong>1. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough (1977)</strong></p> <p><strong><img width="245" height="400" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5678/the-thorn-birds-by-colleen-mccullough.jpg" alt="The Thorn Birds By Colleen Mc Cullough" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></strong></p> <p>Set in the Australian outback in 1915, this remarkable saga follows the ill-fated romance between the beautiful but headstrong Maggie Cleary and the handsome Roman Catholic priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart.</p> <p><strong>2. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles (1969)</strong></p> <p><strong><img width="247" height="375" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5679/the-french-lieutenant’s-woman-by-john-fowles_247x375.jpg" alt="The French Lieutenant ’s Woman By John Fowles" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></strong></p> <p>Victorian gentleman, Charles Smithson, is engaged to a wealthy woman when he falls for Sarah Woodruff, a mysterious and independent woman rumoured to be the lover of a French lieutenant</p> <p><strong>3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)</strong></p> <p><strong><img width="252" height="375" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5680/anna-karenina-by-leo-tolstoy_252x375.jpg" alt="Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></strong></p> <p>Trapped in a loveless marriage, Anna Karenina embarks on a dangerous affair with the handsome Vronsky. A tragic love story set in the highest circles of Russian society.</p> <p><strong>4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)</strong></p> <p> <img width="262" height="390" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5681/prideprejudice423x630_262x390.jpg" alt="Pride Prejudice 423x 630" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></p> <p>The perennially delightful romantic comedy follows the rocky courtship of Elizabeth and Darcy – both of who overcame their pride and prejudices in order to see they’re perfect for one another.</p> <p><strong>5. The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973) </strong></p> <p><img width="272" height="426" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5682/the-princess-bride-by-william-goldman_272x426.jpg" alt="The Princess Bride By William Goldman" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></p> <p>With swashbuckling pirates, a masked crusader, giants, action and, of course, true love, Goldman’s fun and irreverent story of Buttercup and Westley is romantic fantasy at its finest.</p> <p><strong>6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)</strong></p> <p><strong><img width="243" height="385" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5683/wuthering-heights-by-emily-bronte_243x385.jpg" alt="Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></strong></p> <p>A gothic romance charged with violence, sex and alcoholism, Emily Bronte’s only novel tells the tortured love story between the dark Heathcliff and wild Catherine.  </p> <p><strong>7. A Room with a View by EM Forster (1908)</strong></p> <p><strong><img width="243" height="399" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5684/a-room-with-a-view-by-em-forster_243x399.jpg" alt="A Room With A View By EM Forster" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></strong></p> <p>When young English woman Lucy Honeychurch travels to Italy, she meets free thinking George Emerson. This is a beautiful coming of age story about self-identity and love.</p> <p><strong>8. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)</strong></p> <p><img width="250" height="379" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/5686/gone-with-the-wind_250x379.jpg" alt="Gone With The Wind" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/></p> <p>This Pulitzer Prize winning American Civil War epic charts the love story between Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara and roguish Rhett Butler.</p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/lifestyle/relationships/2016/07/tips-to-feel-connected-to-others/"><em>9 tips to help you feel connected to others</em></a></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/lifestyle/relationships/2016/07/great-first-date-ideas-for-seniors/"><em>5 great ideas for a first date</em></a></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/lifestyle/relationships/2016/07/relationship-advice-to-ignore/"><em>5 pieces of relationship advice you really should ignore</em></a></strong></span></p>

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8 things you might not know about Anne of Green Gables

<p>L. M. Montgomery’s classic and beloved novel <em>Anne of Green Gables</em> is now more than a century old, yet it remains as popular today as ever before. The novel follows the story of newly-adopted orphan Anne as she settles into her new life at Green Gables on Canada’s Prince Edward Island. Here are 8 things you might not have known about this charming, iconic book.</p> <ol> <li><strong>Many famous authors are fans</strong> – Mark Twain called her “the dearest and most lovable child in fiction” since <em>Alice from Alice in Wonderland</em>, and Margaret Atwood penned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/29/fiction.margaretatwood" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">an essay</span></strong></a> in 2008 in praise of the beloved character.</li> <li><strong>Japan loves Anne</strong> – A missionary left a copy of the book with her Japanese friend in 1939 who then translated it into Japanese, titling it <em>Akage No Anne</em> (Anne of the Red Hair). She kept her translation hidden throughout the war, only releasing it in 1952. It was adapted into Japan’s school curriculum and quickly rocketed the novel to fame, partly due to Anne’s “exotic” red hair and her strong work ethic, a value highly praised in Japanese society.</li> <li><strong>Anne was a figurehead of Polish resistance</strong> – <em>Anne of Green Gables</em> was unofficially translated into Polish in 1912 under the pseudonym “Anne Montgomery”. Over the next four decades, during the hardest times in Poland’s history, the book remained a symbol of everything the Polish resistance was fighting for.</li> <li><strong>Anne is just as popular as ever</strong> –It may have been more than a century, but to this day more than 125,000 people still flock to setting of the novel, Cavendish (or Avonlea in the books), each year – around 20 per cent of which come from Japan. Montgomery’s books and Anne of Green Gables merchandise are still huge earners.</li> <li><strong>Anne is a reflection of L. M. Montgomery</strong> – Montgomery was raised by her strict grandparents who never made her feel like part of the family. She created Anne as an idealised version of herself, and this is particularly clear in quotes like, “Nobody ever did want me.”</li> <li><strong>Montgomery didn’t want any sequels</strong> – The author confessed that she never wanted to create a sequel, but was coerced into doing so by the publisher. “I’m awfully afraid if the thing takes, they’ll want me to write her through college,” she wrote to a friend in 1908. “The idea makes me sick.”</li> <li><strong>The girl who played “Anne Shirley” was named “Anne Shirley”</strong> – Seems too good to be true? Well, in a way, it is. In the 1934 film, the actress hired to play Anne, Dawn Paris, was forced to change her name to Anne Shirley to boost publicity for the film.</li> <li><strong>Not just books</strong> – The character of Anne has appeared in three films (one more to come in the next year or so), 17 television series and specials (with another to come next year) and six stage productions.</li> </ol> <p>What was your favourite book as a child? Tell us about it in the comments below.</p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><a href="/entertainment/books/2016/07/6-classic-books-that-were-banned/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>6 classic books that were banned</strong></em></span></a></p> <p><a href="/entertainment/books/2016/06/why-you-should-read-every-day/"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>8 reasons why you should read every day</em></span></strong></a></p> <p><a href="/entertainment/books/2016/05/encouraging-children-to-read/"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>How to encourage your grandchildren to love reading</strong></span></em></a></p>

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