Love, Loss, and What We Ate

Greetings from Chennai, formerly Madras, where today’s author was partly raised. My friend and I have been here for a few days and are heading out tomorrow. It’s safe to say that the highlight of my stop in Chennai happened last night. My friends and I had a chance to take a private South Indian cooking class in

Heat & Light

If you’re familiar with Jennifer Haigh, you’re probably familiar with the fictional town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania. It’s the setting of two of her previous books, Baker Towers and News from Heaven; the books span generations as they follow the town’s residents through the coal mining boom and bust. In Heat & Light, another form of energy

The Bees

Born into the lowest caste of her hive’s hierarchy, Flora 717 is destined to be a sanitation worker for her entire life, mindlessly tending to the dirty work assigned to her by the hive’s higher-ups. Everything in the hive is done to serve the queen, who is immortal and loves all of her children. Accept.

What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

What do women want when it comes to sex? Traditionally speaking, men are the ones who have always been thought to have ravenous sexual appetites. You know how it goes: for men, sex is a matter of lust and physicality; for women, it’s a matter of emotional bonding and intimacy. But is that really how

Blonde

This August marked the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Monroe is a woman who attained icon status early in her short career, and whose role in pop culture has since reached mythical proportions. Published in 2001, Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde reimagines Monroe’s life, from her troubled childhood to her whirlwind rise to stardom, and