The question is… would this spark your interest in reading (wife of former AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin) Dr. Laurie Ann Levin‘s God, The Universe, and Where I Fit In? Publishers Weekly deems it “standing out from the pack of more traditional book trailers.”
Book Trailer Standout?
ICYMI
“People write to me to let me know that, in case I missed it, there are only two genders.” Year in Reading alum Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts, speaks to The Guardian about gender, family, and her personal life.
Very Lovely and Intense
“I hadn’t gone back in time, but in a sense Rome had come forward, by insidious and sly degrees, under new names, hidden by the flak talk and phony obscurations, at last into our world again.” Whatever you say, Philip. Was Philip K. Dick a mystic or was he just a madman?
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Delicate Husk, Inconvenient Hair
Recommended Reading: “So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction” by Kaveh Akbar.
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Who Wrote the Golden Plates?
For centuries, inquiring theologians have wondered about the authorship of The Bible. Now a writer at the LARB, William L. Davis, raises a related question: who really wrote The Book of Mormon?
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True Women
If you thought True Detective needed more women on it, check out our list of recommended female detective books, or read Helen McClory’s flash fiction piece from the perspective of the dead girl, “Pretty Dead Girl Takes a Break.”
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The Art of Translation
In general, fact-checking isn’t the most glamorous part of a journalist’s career, which is why Michael Erard was surprised to find that a recent fact-checking session for an Al Jazeera article turned out to be among the most interesting conversations of his life. Why? His sources were linguists, and their job was to explain to him the workings of brand-new sign languages.
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Brutality and Pragmatism
“Will anyone in America give a damn about Beig? It’s hard to imagine our glittering zeitgest machine ever getting behind her, with her landscape, her women, her knowledge of the secret lives of animals born for the hatchet. Her writing, so invested in the disappearing rural world, is particular, yes, but universal: her characters love and long and pine away.” Matthew Neill Null is unsatisfied with how American readers have treated the work of the great German novelist Maria Beig. He makes a passionate case in her favor in this new essay over at The Paris Review.
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