Haunting Beauty: Apex Magazine's Cover Art

Alright, guys, you know that I'm a major lover of vivid and funky sci-fi/fantasy cover art (refresh your memory here if necessary). So you won't be surprised when I fall all over myself to show you some of the beautiful images recently (and not so recently) featured on the cover of Apex Magazine.

Like great literature, great art invites you to make connections across time and space, recognizing older, influential works in newly-painted landscapes or portraits. This is what happened when I looked at recent Apex covers, particularly those featuring solitary female figures. Below are four of my favorites:

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Bookish PSA

Hello all you awesome readers, just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for following along and commenting on the posts. If you have any ideas for a guest post, or for book recommendations you wish I would share with the world, leave a comment here or drop me a line on the BW facebook page or on Twitter @Rcordas. On the fb page I drop links to the latest blog posts and share other bookish news and fun things from around the bookternet, as they say.

Happy reading!

- Rachel

Connections

It was sort of a revelation for me when, at some point in high school, I realized that this world is full of connections and convergences. Now, this probably seems obvious to most people, but at my school, subjects were taught in isolation and connections across space and time were rarely, if ever, mentioned. Chemistry, for instance, lived in one corner, History in another. No one ever stepped up and said, "hey, maybe someone should put different innovations and discoveries in chemistry in their historical contexts," etc. And yet, every once in a while, a couple of classes would happen to touch on the same subject/idea/event, but from completely different angles. This, I repeat, I found fascinating.

Even MORE Things That Drive Books Crazy

[#thingsbookshate]

• To all the literary critics: Go away. Just...just...go away.

• To all the cats: We are not your personal butt-cushions.

• We. Are. Not. Frisbees.

• We are not meant for attics, bathrooms, basements, or attics. We are meant to be seen in all our splendor.

• Babies & toddlers are not allowed within 500 miles of us. Unless we are a board book. And it still sucks.

• We are not coasters. We are not coasters. WE ARE NOT COASTERS.

• Either don't shelve us two-deep, or give us stadium seating.

Reinventing the Wheel...Again and Again

*Warning- this is a rant*


When I first skimmed this article in The Atlantic about why 21st century students should read the "racy popular novels of America's past," I thought, "ah! This is good. The discussion concerning popularity versus/and merit in fiction is continuing, and it will keep some of the more interesting older novels from sinking into total obscurity."

Ah, sometimes I really am too optimistic. I haven't read Gura's book, but it doesn't sound like it's a continuation of the conversation that was pretty-well fleshed out by Nina Baym, Susan K. Harris, and others just over 20 years ago. No- from the looks of this article, Gura is acting like he's just discovered the things that earlier critics have known and discussed for years. Ironically, we have a male professor apparently uncovering women's novels that men had neglected, novels that female critics and professors had already talked about. (And if I see one more book that has some version of "The Rise of the American Novel" in its title, I am absolutely going to have a meltdown).

So, really?? Really?!

(Hiding Her Face in Shame)

It's time for a confession.

I have not read anything by the following authors yet. And yes, that means that I should be locked up in literary prison until such time as I have read these authors and proven that I am not living under a rock.

1. Jeffrey Eugenides

2. Margaret Atwood

3. Ian Fleming

Authors and their Soups

So we all love the Great Writers, right? And we all love soup, right? RIGHT! Thus...this post.



 

Ernest Hemingway's soup: water. None of that fancy-schmancy crap!








 


Herman Melville's soup: brine-y with a heaping tbsp of pepper. Make that the whole pepper shaker.

Literary Theory for the Rest of Us

(yes, these are meant to be funny. No, I wasn't trying to offend anyone. Etc. etc. etc.)

Formalism- The text spontaneously descended from Heaven and all we have to do to understand it is read it and analyze its form, cause clearly context can tell us nothing, nothing at all!!!

Psychoanalytic criticism- The text harbors within itself all kinds of dark, mysterious, atavistic tidbits that tell us whether or not the author had a thing for his mamma, or something...

Marxism- The text features someone oppressing someone else, even if the text is just about two people sitting on a nondescript sofa drinking water and not saying anything at all.

Reader-response criticism- The text is what my brain makes of it, and if that means that Moby-Dick is about an elephant's quest for really tasty sushi, then so be it.