Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge

#thomas pynchon

Authors Writing Libretti

If it’s mid-winter, then we must be in the thick of opera season- am I right?  Now, I hear some of ...

Our Reading Lives: Why I Like Difficult Novels

When I first read David Foster Wallace’s notoriously difficult novel Infinite Jest in the fall of 2008, just weeks after ...

The Confidence Index: INHERENT VICE

Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to his critical darling The Master is an adaption of Thomas Pychon’s 2009 goofball of ...

Does the MacArthur Genius Grant Result in More Genius?

In 1981, Cormac McCarthy, at age 48, was named one of the first MacArthur Foundation Fellows (more commonly known these ...

A Book For Each Season: 6 Perfect Autumn Reads

I don’t eat watermelon during the winter. I don’t drink warm apple cider on the fourth of July. I don’t ...

Handicapping the Nobel Prize in Lit: Philip Roth vs. E.L. James?

Let it not be said that the folks at Ladbrokes don’t have a sense of humor. There, at the end ...

Top 10 Literary Quotes from The Simpsons

The Simpsons is famous for many things — being the longest running American sitcom (and animated series) ever, unleashing a ...

Fun with Literary Motivational Posters

The site Big Huge Labs lets you create your own motivational (or demotivational, whichever you prefer) posters. It’s a lot ...

When Literary Opposites Attract

People often ask me — since I’m always reading more than one book at once — how do you keep ...

Betting the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature

Ladbroke’s, one of those English gambling houses that seem to have a prop for everything, has an extensive board for ...