At The Rumpus, Darcie Dennigan pens a strange and beautiful review of G.C. Waldrep’s new collection of poetry, Archicembalo: “I dreamt that G.C. Waldrep was offering me a tumbler of Pepsi, and amid the soda bubbles were many pills.”
Listening to Poems
Inventing Language
From J.R.R. Tolkien‘s High Elvish to Anthony Burgess‘s Nadsat: the BBC takes a survey of fictional languages and the invented words that made it into our everyday speech, like Dickens‘s “butterfingers” and Shakespeare‘s “scuffle.”
Blue Nights: Released Next Week
Jacket Copy visits Joan Didion at her apartment in Manhattan to discuss Blue Nights, which moves back and forth between the death of Didion’s 39-year-old daughter, Quintana, six years ago and the author’s reflections on aging. The book is a much anticipated follow-up to 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking, in which Didion wrote about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne.
The World According to Zadie
The first reviews of Zadie Smith‘s new collection of essays, Changing My Mind, are in and the general line’s a non-committal, guarded praise. I think it’s wunderkind jealousy, myself. Voici: The L.A Times review and The San Francisco Chronicle review.
The Zone
In the past few years, we’ve seen a swell of books that focus on female friendship. The newfound popularity of writers like Elena Ferrante has given us a new wealth of books that explore this kind of relationship. At Salon, Dear Thief author Samantha Harvey examines why this is, as part of a larger discussion about her own novel and the literary landscape. You could also read our review of Harvey’s earlier novel The Wilderness.
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Monday Linkday
My mom pointed out this article in the Washington Post about a bookstore in Baltimore that primarily gives away books rather than selling them. It’s called the Book Thing:”That’s the whole thing with the Book Thing,” Wattenberg says. “All I am is a middleman. The people have books…. They give them to me, they’re happy to have a place to see them go somewhere, and the people that get the books are happy to get the books.”Also, file under conspicuous consumption: Anyone looking for an extravagant gift for the film buff in their life should look no further.Spotted on the el: The Travels of Marco Polo… sure the red line doesn’t go all the way to China, but we can dream.
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Book Fixin’
Do you have books in need of binding repair? Do it yourself!
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Time to Read
One Reddit user wants to know, “What are some good books to read [in jail]?” Might we recommend some works by the 19th century Russian masters?
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