Michelle Dean

“It is no secret, of course, that people have strong feelings about fat - feelings that seem only to have been inflamed by the sense, in western countries, that there is an obesity crisis afo...”

“Beauty pageants in general are foreign and noxious to me: I can barely muster the energy to put on lip gloss and mascara.”

“Summer is always a tricky time to recommend new literary fiction. The big releases do not hit until fall.”

“There's no good way to be the center of a media maelstrom you did not choose for yourself.”

“There has long been an argument in New York about what, exactly, the purpose of book awards ought to be. One model sees them as a celebration of the unquestioned best and brightest, a triump...”

“Mass market paperback thrillers are a dime a dozen. The trick is to find something that actually sticks to the ribs.”

“Many people, I've noticed by informally polling friends, are prone to distinguishing a beach read by genre. Some people thought all thrillers are beach reads; others thought all romances are...”

“While 'Twilight''s popularity was undeniable among both the teenagers they were aimed at and middle-aged women who flocked to the series in droves, Meyer has drawn her share of criticism for...”

“We are reminded repeatedly, often by older men, that western civilization has died on the altar of social media.”

“Would we even recognize an Oliver Stone production if it didn't kick up the usual fuss?”

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to publish - or read - books that have a wide potential audience. But it does generate a certain plodding sameness of tone and subject matter that plagues...”

“It's become a cliche to say that a piece of drama is about 'the nature of truth.' But 'Rectify' so openly plays with the slippery nature of memory that the label directly applies.”

“Mary Roach's curiosity is notoriously infectious.”

“Bad criticism recites rote arguments. The shame of rote arguments isn't just that they're cliches, though they are, but that they tend to hide from us why a critic is actually thinking what...”

“The plot of 'Stranger Things' is so simple that even a brief description risks spoiling it.”

“Writing a novel about feminism can be a thankless task.”

“Hollywood versions of watershed moments in American history are generally high-minded shlock. 'JFK,' 'The People vs. Larry Flynt,' even 'Lincoln': all of these boast excellent performances i...”

“Prestige podcasts, like prestige television shows, tend to have an audience that believes itself literate, well-informed, and reasonable. Listening to podcasts, in this model, is a form of v...”

“A lot of people produce podcasts in which they simply ramble on for hours about themselves and their lives. There is something very poignant about the volume of human desire to be heard out...”

“The 'World Wide Web', as people quaintly called the Internet in 1996, was more or less made up of text. There was no YouTube. There was no Facebook. There was, however, Usenet, a loose and d...”