The Middling Place
Your comprehensive guide to the novel—great books, literary history, narrative craft, and the art of reading.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 29, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest issues
Modernism: A World Without a Narrator (opens the original)
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Just in case you missed it, my name is Sabrina, and I run The Middling Place: A space for you and me to practice the art of close reading within context so that we can, hopefully, closely read our world. You’ve reached our year-long study of the history of the novel, genre-by-genre, called the Architecture of the Novel. In this series, youR
Architecture of the Novel: Modernism (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-fullscreen" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MKBN!,w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F91778e38-f9f5-48a0-a025-6181f0f0e848_156
Architecture of the Novel: Historical Fiction (opens the original)
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Just in case you missed it, my name is Sabrina, and I run The Middling Place: A space for you and me to practice the art of close reading within context so that we can, hopefully, closely read our world. You’ve reached our year-long study of the history of the novel, genre-by-genre, called the Architecture of the Novel. In this series, you’ll learn about the rules of each genre, how it developed over time, and receive foundational reading lists. Today, we are covering historical fiction. </e
The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Hard Books (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-fullscreen" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7PFO!,w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb98f2747-a601-4613-9437-968d9bcda827_12
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