Theodora Goss on why she writes:

“This movement to separate fantasy and reality, but also realism and fairy tale, continued into the nineteenth century, and by the end of the century it was very clear that there were the respectable novel and short story, and the considerably less respectable forms of fairy tale, myth, romance (in the old sense of an adventure story), ghost story, etc. By the twentieth century, they occupied different publishing niches, different shelves in the bookstore. As they still do….

Here’s the thing: talking about conservation will not save the badgers of England. If anything will save them, it will be the way people feel about Mr. Badger. We are human beings, and we make decisions based not on logic or rationality, however much we may think we do (deluded as we are about ourselves), but on emotion. And what creates emotion? Story.”

[Via]

Read it for free on Goodreads:

glitchygif

[Read the entire novel for free.]

BookTuber Tuesday – Karen Armstrong, on violence and religion

 

Check out other book vlogs we’ve featured here.

Have a book vlog video you want us to check out? Submit a link below in the comments and it could make the CIRCO blog.

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]

all yellowB&N | Amazon | Etc.

March, April, May CIRCO blog roundup: JUNE BUG

Have we really not rounded up our monthly posts for three months? Oh my. Let’s head ’em up, move ’em out.

We changed our Tweets of the Week to be more other social-network friendly. It’s now going to be officially called Social Medea.  Pun intended.

We posted a video on The World’s Greatest Internet Troll.

[The Author added commentary on Victoria E. Schwab’s statement on writing/creativity in the current publishing industry]

As always, Gabbler had things to recommend–like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season 2 and the children’s book I Am Pan!

Sexism in YA was discussed. 

Our Throwback Thursday posts included a progression of Beardless Hipster Songs that we thought was funny.

Ursula K. Le Guin needs to get with the times. 

BLA took back what s/he said about The Jungle Book 2016 movie.

The Magicians TV show ended. 

BLA went on a rant about the representation of gods in our stories. 

J.K. Rowling wrote about Native American Wizards and shit hit the fan.

Anomalisa was weird af.

Gabbler had some thoughts on Daredevil season 2. 

Our GIF of the Month from our GIF of the day is:

 

On Kafkaesque:

“Kafka is not the only author to lend his name to an adjective – Merriam-Webster also points to Dickensian and Byronic, but there are many. Proustian. Joycean. Miltonic. Chaucerian. Pinteresque. Woolfian. Faulknerian.

Perhaps almost as abused as Kafkaesque is Orwellian. The OED defines it as “characteristic of Orwell’s writings, esp. the totalitarian state in his dystopian account of the future, Nineteen Eighty-Four”. But the New York Times says its use “reduces Orwell’s palette to a single shade of noir. It brings to mind only sordid regimes of surveillance and thought control and the distortions of language that make them possible”, while an excellent Daily Mash article argues that the word has “nothing to do with having to put your recycling out” and that “similarly, speed cameras are not ‘Orwellian’”, because “Winston Smith does not spend Nineteen Eighty-Four trying to weasel out of a £75 fine for doing 70 on the A12”.

But back to The Vegetarian, and how Kafkaesque it is, whatever that actually means to us. Tonkin also compared the novel to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and to The Bell Jar and The Yellow Wallpaper, making it, I suppose, Ovidian, Plathian, and Perkins Gilmanesque, as well (although I’m not sure if that’ll make it into the blurb).”

[Via]

 

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]

all yellowB&N | Amazon | Etc.