In New York Magazine, critic Sam Anderson offers a list of this fall’s Most Anticipated Books. (We posted our own in July.)
New York Magazine Previews the Fall
To the Literary Racetracks!
It’s that time of year again, readers. It's time to stock up on gossip, skim through pieces on your favorite writers and populate your bookmarks with pages from Ladbrokes and Intrade. It's time, in other words, to prognosticate the Nobel Prize winner, which Ladbrokes predicts will be the novelist Haruki Murakami. If you read Ben Dooley's review of 1Q84, you might have placed your bets already.
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The Novel vs. The Net
Sven Birkerts, still working through arguments begun in The Gutenberg Elegies, suggests in The American Scholar that "the novel and the Internet are opposites." (via)
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The Great 2014 Indie Press Cheat Sheet
Interested in reading some of the indie and small press books coming out in 2014, but don’t know where to start? Michael Seidlinger put together a great Cheat Sheet of titles to get excited about this year. Think of it as a complement to our Great 2014 Book Preview.
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Faulty Education
Recommended Reading: The Harvard Gazette on education and inequality. “If inequality starts anywhere, many scholars agree, it’s with faulty education.” Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes about closing the gap between high school and higher education.
Body Works
Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel includes, among other discomfiting things, a series of fake advertisements for surreal women’s beauty products. The plot, which follows a proofreader named A, begins with the main character’s attempt to evade her roommate, and eventually brings A to join a “Church of Conjoined Eaters.” At Slate, Molly Fischer argues the book deftly captures our society’s weird treatment of femininity.
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Making It Big
Over at Catapult, Mensah Demary shares the story of how he got to be a professional editor. As he puts it, “I was asked recently what it takes to succeed as a writer and editor. Actually, I was being asked a more specific question: how do you become a successful writer and editor? I don’t have the answers; I only have my life.” Pair with Kate Angus’s Millions essay on making a living as a poet.