Chloe Angyal briefly interviews A.S. Byatt at Feministing. Byatt will be reading in New York City this Thursday.
A.S. Byatt on Feministing
The Scanner, Darkly
A used-book flipper, armed with a laser scanner and a PDA, delineates the unease he feels about the odd profession he has chosen.
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Literary Podcasts
Recommended recommendations: “Eight Excellent Literary Podcasts for Your Morning Commute.”
More Amazon Sales Ranking Crack
Authors now have more Amazon sales ranking data to obsess over. Weekly Nielsen BookScan data is now available to authors for free through their “Author Central” area. (press release)
An Encounter with a Stranger
Over at Longreads, you can read the first chapter of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night – one of the most anticipated books of 2016.
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Try, Try Again
We have a lot of prizes that honor well-crafted first novels. But what about the second novel, which is far more likely to be ignored? Herewith, Dan Kois announces that Slate is teaming up with the Whiting Foundation to produce We Second That, a list of under-recognized second novels from the past five years. You could also read our own Bill Morris on the golden age of the second novel.
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Merry Pranksters
“No drugs on the bus!” Take a road trip with poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and some other really fantastic poets.
The Women
Director Jamieson Fry follows up–and perhaps surpasses–his incredible book trailer for Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply with this one for The Women by T.C. Boyle
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Not Very Titillating
Those of you who know the joy of reading romance novels with your friends have probably wondered at some point what people who write erotica are like. Are they bankers and professionals? Housewives and mistresses? Are they some combination of all of the above? At Slate, a chaste look at the lives of unchaste writers.
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