BOMB Magazine has a conversation between poker buddies Nam Le and Charles D’Ambrosio.
Poker Buddies BOMB
Sick and Wrong
Recommended Reading: Dan Kois on his favorite books of the year. On Alissa Nutting’s Tampa, he writes: “Tampa mixes deadpan social satire, lurid true-crime storytelling, and out-and-out porn into a poisonous stew.”
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Flame Throwers
“Try to imagine Hemingway telling Fitzgerald, ‘My tailor flamed me on Amazon because I panned him on Yelp.'” Author D. Foy wrote a negative review of a tailor on Yelp, so the tailor threatened to pan his forthcoming book, Made to Break, on Amazon.
Red Dawn
Apropos of nothing, here are some books to read when your country is invaded by Russians.
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To Booker or Not to Booker
Maybe you’re a speed-reader or maybe you’re a psychic who plans their reading lists months ahead of time. Those are the only two possible scenarios by which you may have finished reading all of the books on this year’s Man Booker Long List. And if that’s the case, it’s time to get started on The Guardian’s “Not The Booker” Long List.
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To Thine Own Self Be True
New writers need to trust themselves, Marilynne Robinson advises in an interview with Thessaly La Force for VICE. “The idea that you might do something radically brilliant—that assumption is very empowering and it has given the world a lot of really interesting things to look at,” she said.
Scientists on Science Fiction
In New Scientist, several prominent scientists and literary types “nominate their lost sci-fi classics,” from Richard Dawkins on Dark Universe to William Gibson on Random Acts of Senseless Violence.
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The Finnish Word for Author is “Kirjailija”
Jill Timbers, the translator charged with converting J.K. Rowling’s next book into Finnish, will have to complete the 480-page project in just three weeks. She writes about the work over here, and then adds some more information on the Three Percent blog.
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