Reviews in the Wild Archive

Mary Gordon is probably the first who comes to mind when I think of women writers writing fiction about women self-identifying in relation to their children, mothers, and lovers. See her haunting Pearl, for example, or the three novellas published together as The Rest of Life, which I’m currently reading. So it’s not surprising

If there ever was a frontier that poses the most questions in science, I imagine the idea of consciousness is one of them. Most books on consciousness are either from a religious perspective of the soul or look at neuroscience, discussing studies and experiments and what they may imply about the brain and perception.

Below are three books about you. New scientist’s CultureLab has three short reviews up of books that encounter the question of personal identity (“Neuroscience clues to who you aren’t“). What I like about the selection of books being reviewed are the angles from which they come at the question, or at least the angle

According to Connectome by Sebastian Seung, you can teach an old dog new tricks. We are more than our genes, and life events and experiences can help our brains rewire our neurons. How much they get rewired may be based on the role our genes play in these new connections, but we are not

Historical fiction is an intriguing creature because of its double nature: rooted in history, but executed in that wide spectrum known simply as “inspired by.” Characters in these novels may have only a tangential connection to the historical record or they may be based squarely on what is known. And since history is “told

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey Reagan Arthur Books (February 1, 2012) 389 pages (hardcover) Because fairy tales are “full of unsettling transformations and traumatic bargains,” says Ron Charles, fiction editor at The Washington Post, writing fairy tales is “a difficult act of wizardry: One wrong spell and you’re cast out of the kingdom

The New Testament is constantly being re-interpreted from a variety of perspectives. From feminists, to socialists, to traditionalists; there's even a version as seen through the prism of Star Wars...

In this review of Brain Culture, Maria Popova, writes that, “far from a mere motherboard, the brain has swollen into one of humanity’s greatest obsessions,” and in fact, has become a “muse.” It is the idea of the brain as a muse that struck me.