It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…
Tuesday New Release Day: Kincaid, Sendak, Shields, Suri, Capote, Wayne, Wodehouse, Nadler, Sloss, Bauer, Wolf, Guthrie
A very big week for new books: See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid; My Brother's Book, the last book completed by Maurice Sendak before his death in May 2012; How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields; The City of Devi by Manil Suri; a new edition of Breakfast at Tiffany's & Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote; The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne (see our interview today); P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters; Wise Men by Stuart Nadler; debut novels Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss and Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer; City of Angels, an autobiographical novel by Christa Wolf; and House of Earth, the lost novel of Woody Guthrie.
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Uber Modern Bookstores
The ideal bookstore is hard to pin down. Until recently the consensus seemed to lean towards old, slightly dusty and pleasantly chaotic, but these modern bookstores full of sleek white cases and clean lines have us reconsidering.
A Frothy, Heady BFFship
"It seems that not only do Americans see beer as a person, they see beer as a person other people like better than them."
By the Book
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the mind behind Hamilton, joins The New York Times to talk about the literature that has inspired him. Check out Janet and Mike’s thoughts on Hamilton in our Book Report.
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Image of the Text
Recommended Reading: A brief history of book illustration and books as objects, over at Literary Hub.
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Into Thin Air
Most readers have their own idiosyncratic systems for displaying the most valuable titles they own. For a lot of people, it makes the most sense to keep their favorite books on a particular shelf. At The Paris Review Daily, Sadie Stein writes about an odd phenomenon -- “The Phantom Shelf,” which consists of books you love so much you had to lend them to friends. (Related: Kevin Hartnett on reading our parents’ bookshelves.)
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Lonely Subjects
Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life, explores the intersection between photography and loneliness. Pair with Angela Qian’s review of Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City.
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