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Roald Dahl

How to create a great villain

September 16, 2024 by Nathan Bransford

Bleak painting of two old men

Bill Sikes. Lady MacBeth. Captain Ahab. The Wormwoods. Long John Silver. Sauron. Iago. The best villains in literature send a shiver down our spine and make our blood pressure rise. Why do some villains have such a hold on us while others feel like weak sauce? Let me first say that not every novel needs […]

Filed Under: Writing Advice Tagged With: Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, J.M. Barrie, J.R.R. Tolkien, Roald Dahl, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare

How to fight book bans (This week in books)

April 7, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! The resurgence of book bans remains distressingly rampant as parents try to control not just what their own kids read, but other kids as well. As Jamelle Bouie notes, what some are calling “parents rights” is really “when some parents have the right to dominate all the others.” Alyssa Rosenberg has some […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Censorship, ChatGPT, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Donald Maass, E-books, John Matthew Fox, Roald Dahl, Stacy Frazer, Star Wars

The Dahl controversy is capitalism not wokeism (This week in books)

March 10, 2023 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! Lots of links saved up since the last edition of This Week in Books, so let’s get to it. A controversy erupted over the last few weeks involving Puffin and the Roald Dahl Story Company creating new editions of Dahl’s children’s novels with updates to some of Dahl’s language with an aim […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Charles Dickens, ChatGPT, HarperCollins, Ian Fleming, Jesse Armstrong, Lincoln Michel, Matthew Walther, Monica Hesse, Prince, Roald Dahl, Writer Beware

Who are the most memorable parents in books?

July 24, 2019 by Nathan Bransford

A painting of a family

The Wormwoods in Matilda. The Weasleys in Harry Potter. Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. There are some seriously memorable parents in literature. Which ones are your favorites? Art: The Artist and His Family by James Peale

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl

Orwell’s “1984” turns seventy (This week in books)

June 14, 2019 by Nathan Bransford

This week! Books! George Orwell’s 1984 turned seventy years old this past week, and, well, everyone’s kinda wishing it weren’t quite so prescient. Two insightful reflections on Orwell’s classic dystopian masterpiece caught my eye this week: Louis Menand in The New Yorker and George Packer in The Atlantic. For me, no one can dispute Orwell’s […]

Filed Under: This Week in Books Tagged With: Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Roald Dahl, Romance, Scotland, Tin House

In Defense of Dead and Absent Parents in Children’s Literature

September 23, 2010 by Nathan Bransford

There has been some discussion in the book world lately about the prevalence of absent and/or dead parents in children’s literature. In an interesting article in Publishers Weekly called “The Ol’ Dead Dad Syndrome,” editor and author Leila Sales argues that dead parents in children’s literature are not only troublingly common, they can sometimes be […]

Filed Under: Books, Culture Tagged With: Culture, J.K. Rowling, Jacob Wonderbar, Roald Dahl, Star Wars, Suzanne Collins, Young Adult Literature

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About Nathan

Hi, I’m Nathan. I’m the author of How to Write a Novel and the Jacob Wonderbar series, which was published by Penguin. I used to be a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. and I’m dedicated to helping authors achieve their dreams. Let me help you with your book!

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How to Write A Novel
Cover of How to Publish a Book by Nathan Bransford
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapo
Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp

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