When a book is as famous as The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, it’s easy to let an intimidation factor prevent learning from it. But when we dig into what made Hemingway’s writing style famous, clear takeaways emerge. His preference for nouns and verbs over adjectives and adverbs provides… Read more: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

In a world of distraction, led by a 24/7 news cycle packed with hyperbole, it’s hard for writers to command a reader’s attention. This becomes more acute when the issue they’re writing about has gone political, such that most readers will enter their default mode of reaction when merely seeing… Read more: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

Spoiler Alert! The Stranger by Albert Camus is one of the most thought-provoking novels I’ve read. It’s set in Algeria, where a Frenchman, Meursault, does not cry at his mother’s funeral, kills an Arab man on a sun-drenched beach near Algiers, and is sentenced to death in part because the court… Read more: The Stranger by Albert Camus

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates is one of my favorite novels. That it was all but forgotten prior to the release of its 2008 film is a shame. Literary critic Alfred Kazin wrote that it “locates the new American tragedy squarely on the field of marriage.” Anybody who has ever… Read more: Masterful Description by Richard Yates