- E-book pricing wars continue. Sony tries to hit the Kindle where it hurts by offering cheaper e-books. Meanwhile, $0 is becoming an important price point at the Kindle store.
- Sam Anderson hates Thomas Pynchon.
- An indie bookstore fan uses our bookstore tour as a jumping-off point for a literary day in Manhattan. You can too.
Curiosities: Smoldering Eyebrows
Socioeconomic Diversity Matters
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“A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment”
Recommended Listening: “A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment,” a new podcast from Sherman Alexie and Jess Walter.
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ReBorne
“Getting too quickly to where you want to go, getting there too smoothly, is antithetical to thinking through complex issues. You want roadblocks, confusion, chaos, and doubt. Unexpected, wonderful things come out of this approach.” Jeff VanderMeer provides a master class for Publisher’s Weekly on novel revision, explaining in five steps how his new book Borne arrived at its final incarnation. And for more shop talk, see VanderMeer’s interview with The Kills author Richard House from our own pages a couple of years back.
We’re Going with “Greatest”
“The actress and author of a new children’s book, The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, has contemplated throwing the writer Michel Houellebecq across a room.” Great NYT subhead or greatest NYT subhead?
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Mad Men Style
Follow Mad Men set decorator Amy Wells on a search for period furniture in Pasadena.
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The Poetic Meter of a Viral Tweet
Frankie Thomas dissects why her viral tweet, an ode to Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Cohen, and Shakespeare, seemed to speak to our need for poetic meter.
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The Art of Hyping
Chad Harbach‘s The Art of Fielding is ubiquitous. We tapped it in our Second Half of 2011 Preview. n+1 bundled it with year-long subscriptions. The Awl interviewed the author. The New Yorker‘s Book Club picked it as their September book. It was reviewed in The New York Times. Now Keith Gessen‘s expanded his Vanity Fair piece on the novel’s development into a standalone e-book. In light of all this hype, McNally Jackson’s Tumblr provides a poignant list of baseball puns for reviewers to start avoiding.