At the Washington Times, Emily Colette Wilkinson reviews Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.
Wilkinson on Larsen
Appearing Elsewhere
My essay on Zadie Foster Franzenides and the current state of literary aesthetics is in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.
Writing as Profession
Writers can’t create original work without financial stability and a minimum amount of rest, writes Maggie Doherty in Dissent. Pair with Kate Angus’s Millions essay on making a living as a poet.
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Around the Horn
I’ve been noticing some of the fantastic pages that libraries and museums have put up for their book exhibits. Here’s Czech book covers of the 1920s and 1930s and Civil War maps from the Library of Congress, for example.Fans of audiobooks will enjoy this essay by the pseudonymous Thomas H. Benton at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Link via OPTR.Thinking about getting rid of some books? This Ask Metafilter thread has lots of suggestions on where to donate your books.For a year, I was a bookstore employee who blogged, so the story of this book clerk in the UK who got fired for blogging hit pretty close to home.
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Les Mosquees
Recommended Reading: Adam Shatz on Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission.
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Ready, Set, Goals
Octavia Butler did everything she set herself to do in this ambitious to-do list—courtesy of the Butler Archive at the Huntington Library in San Marino.
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Wild Possibilities
“Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.” Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me, on maintaining hope and resisting defeatism.
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