Goodbye, Gourmet

Pop quiz! Which former President of a European country came out with a memoir this month? (If you’re stumped, here’s a clue: her country is known for being rainy.)

Sit down with Jessa Crispin, literary blogger and author, at The Rumpus.

“You’re never going to write well for a wider audience if you think it’s less worthwhile, less difficult than doing the academic stuff.” Jo Livingstone interviews David Wolf, commissioning editor of The Guardian Long Read.

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.

There are plenty of new books to this week to fill that post-election void: Both Flesh and Not: Essays, a posthumously published collection from David Foster Wallace; Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior; Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt; Magnificence by Lydia Millet; and These Things Happen, a debut by longtime TV writer Richard Kramer. From the indies, we have The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman and Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie. Also out are Philip Pullman’s new version of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm; Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks; and a big new Michael Jackson biography by a former Rolling Stone editor.

“I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on with your pals.” Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Before You Were Mine” has inspired a few great writers to share some photographs (and tender memories) of their mothers before they were born.