Apparently, great books can be life changing: British prisons have begun using a literature course originally developed in the US and including Shakespeare, Dickens, and Steinbeck to help rehabilitate criminals.
Convicts and Classics
Hey, Fleming Estate: I’m Available To Write One, Too
Any Human Heart author William Boyd has been tapped to write the newest James Bond novel, the Ian Fleming estate has announced. Just so we know what to expect: his favorite Bond installment was From Russia with Love.
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Writing Without Rain
“We don’t yet know how to make it rain. But increasingly, we may be talking about what to do when the rain doesn’t come.” Anna North writes for The New York Times about literature in the age of drought.
The Feel of Municipal Politics
Recommended Reading: Parul Sehgal on Jonathan Franzen’s first novel. (You could also check out Eric Lundgren’s counterpoint.)
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Friends Forever
Year in Reading alumnus Jonathan Safran Foer and Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman have been exchanging emails for over a decade. Over at The New York Times Magazine, they share their recent correspondence on how things have changed since the beginning of their friendship.
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Hits and Misses
“You’d be hard-pressed to find a book that was at once so bold in style and ambitious in structure and so much fun to read.” The Guardian asks indie publishers about the books that made their year, including Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue (whose own Year in Reading you can find here).
The Modern Bretteurs
A Russian man was shot last week over an argument about 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Perhaps this means I need to update my article about the history of the Russian duel.
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Show Up, Don’t Show Up
“You’ll engage with your advisor in a free-form dialogue about essential skills such as plotting your next career, pacing your financial ruin, structuring TV binge-watching during optimal writing hours, and characterizing all of this as ‘learning how to fail.'” Hey, this new low-competency MFA from the fictitious Half Mast College sounds pretty great. Here’s our own Hannah Gersen on why she has foregone the MFA route entirely.
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