It’s Lit!It's Lit!
A series of smart, funny video essays from PBS Digital Studios about their favorite books and why they love to read. Host Lindsay Ellis delves into topics like the evolution of YA, how science fiction mirrors our own anxieties, and why the book is sometimes just a _bit_ better than the movie.
Where to Watch It’s Lit! • It's Lit!
13 Episodes
- When the Book is Better than the Movie
E1When the Book is Better than the MovieIt's an age-old debate: The Book vs. The Movie Since the dawn of cinema, film has been sort of the little brother of the more heady, intellectual medium of novels. And many film adaptations of literature leave viewers and critics saying… “The book was better.” But why do adaptations of beloved stories tend not to live up to the source material? - The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, Explained
E2The Evolution of YA: Young Adult Fiction, ExplainedWhere did YA come from, and how did it get so big? “Young Adult” fiction is a term whose meaning has varied wildly over the years. It can apply to coming of age tragedies or Serialized adventures of babysitters, or insert really dated twilight joke here. But where did this “young adult” genre come from? And why did it get so big? - The Evolution of Science Fiction
E3The Evolution of Science FictionStories, tales, and myths from all around the world posing speculative questions around technologies have existed long before Ray Bradbury and Frank Herbert, from the time-traveling Japanese fairy tale "Urashima Tarō” to some of the speculative elements of 1001 Arabian Nights. But there are a few eras that begin to shape what we’ve come to know as science fiction today. - An Ode to the Romance Novel
E4An Ode to the Romance NovelThe romance novel has been the subject of intrigue, derision, and shame in literary discourse long before the modern genre as we know it today existed. Romance novels are relegated to your Aunt Muriel’s bathroom, thrift store book sections, and that one aisle in Barnes and Noble that you pretend to walk through because you got “lost” looking for cookbooks. But it deserves a closer look than that - it is after all the highest grossing of all literary genres, out-selling its next nearest competitor twice over. - How Fantasy Reflects our World
E5How Fantasy Reflects our WorldFantasy is a lens to explore what we as a society find important to our pasts, our presents, and future. Fantasy and science fiction often fall under the umbrella of “speculative fiction” - as a result they are often grouped together, especially in bookstores. But science fiction is a forward-looking genre propelled by the possibilities of technology (and the things that worry us about it), fantasy is … more backward looking. - Why Did They Make Me Read This in High School?
E6Why Did They Make Me Read This in High School?Literary critics, writers, philosophers, bloggers--all have tried to tackle where and why and how an author may strike such lightning in a bottle that their works enter the pantheon of “Classical Literature”. Why this book is required reading in high school, why other books are lost to history. - Fear of GhostWriting
E8Fear of GhostWritingYou might being asking yourself-- Why do ghostwriters even exist? Isn’t that cheating? Isn’t literature supposed to be the result of one person’s agonizing need to create? Aren’t books supposed to be the blood, sweat, and tears of the tortured auteur? Well, the answer is more complicated than you think! - Who Can You Trust? Unreliable Narrators
E9Who Can You Trust? Unreliable NarratorsWho is the most powerful character in fiction? Villains may doom the world, heroes may save it, but no one has more control over the plot than the narrator - expositing the who, what, where, when and how directly into the reader’s mind. But how can you tell that the person telling you the story is telling you the whole story? - The Beauty and Anguish of Les Misérables!
E13The Beauty and Anguish of Les Misérables!Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is one of history’s most famous novels and one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. On this special episode of It’s Lit! we explore how Les Miserable became both a national and revolutionary anthem, and so publicly adored that all 1,900 pages never went out of print.
