Lewis Carroll is celebrated for his fantastical language and logic, but it’s his heroine who lives on and on. Paul Di Filippo looks at Alice in guises old and new.

Fantasy can be a difficult genre for beginners to penetrate, and in a sense, that’s fitting. The foundations of the genre rely on invention and reinvention, pushing boundaries, and infusing the known with the unknown. Where do you even begin when the worlds are unfamiliar (and sprawling), and you can’t fight your way through the […]

Sometimes, when you’ve had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, you need a one-two punch combination of your favorite things to cheer you up. That’s when you need to draw upon the magical marriage of cereal and books—two of life’s greatest things, paired together for a perfect pick-me-up. What could be better than a […]

Welcome to the Book Nerd’s Guide to Life! Every other week, we convene in this safe place to discuss the unique challenges of life for people whose noses are always wedged in books. Find past guides here. I’m at the point in my life where everyone is getting married. And if they’re not getting married, […]

The dirty secret of some fiction is that it’s less, well, fictional than we imagine. Behind every soaring flight of fancy, you’ll find grueling research, direct experience, and, sometimes, real human beings who inspired our favorite characters. While discovering that your favorite author isn’t above nicking from real life might be deflating, the tradeoff is realizing some of the most […]