Ruth Franklin 🍵 Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Ruth Franklin 🍵

The Escape Artist includes harrowing details about Auschwitz that still have the power to shock. But the reactions to Vrba’s testimony by those in power...are nearly as horrifying.

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

Puzzled (to say the least) by this entry about Shirley Jackson in @SFEncyclopedia that claims Stanley Hyman co-wrote Jackson's family chronicles LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS. What is the basis for this? @john_clute https://t.co/qy4ez6RTJV

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

Insightful review by Jennifer Reese in @washingtonpost of The Letters of Shirley Jackson. "The poignancy of 'Letters' comes from the juxtaposition of Jackson’s jaunty social persona and the occasional searing glimpses of a profoundly vulnerable woman." https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/shirley-jacksons-letters-reveal-the-droll-voice-of-an-aggrieved-working-mother/2021/07/28/4eeec8b0-ce1a-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

#caroin2023 continues with Book 2 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson! The lengthy intro to MEANS OF ASCENT (1990), "Ends and Means," starts with a set-piece on LBJ's 1965 speech about his new civil rights bill, which he ends by quoting "We Shall Overcome."

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

Novelist Alaa al-Aswany, 65, the author of “The Yacoubian Building,” which broke taboos on the discussion of homosexuality and Cairo’s urban decline, faces censorship from the Egyptian govt for connections with Israel. Important thread: https://t.co/uvriGmrCtL

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

As a writer who doesn’t “advance steadily & relentlessly” from one book to the next, I was cheered to see this chart by Richard Holmes of his own writing life (in SIDETRACKS): https://t.co/sWSrX39o5p

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

Path to Power Ch 5. We circle back to LBJ's childhood. Some biographers prefer to skip the early days, like George Packer in OUR MAN: "There are no mysteries here that can be unlocked by nursery school." Caro finds useful anecdotes as well as another new (to me) word. #caroin2023 https://t.co/fKDYCNy2AP

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

In AN ODYSSEY, @DAMendelsohnNYC draws on Homer's ODYSSEY to process his relationship with his father. Where is the great work of literature about mothers and daughters, a book to help me understand my relationship with my mother? https://t.co/ZEgey5BD8w

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

Laura van den Berg’s discomfiting and surreal new novel... rejects the very concept of narrative cohesion, plunging the reader instead into a series of dreamscapes. Moody and hallucinatory, the novel asks: How do we distinguish reality from its opposite — whatever that might be?

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Ruth Franklin 🍵

I love this question. Related: what was the *last* book you did this with? For me, My Dark Vanessa. https://twitter.com/ElliottBlackwe3/status/1524731822453792769

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