The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, the forthcoming debut effort by sometime Millions contributor Elif Batuman, gets an intriguing write-up in Publishers Weekly.
Previewing Batuman
Station Eleven Preview
A. A. Knopf posted the first chapter of our own Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Station Eleven, on Scribd for all to see and enjoy.
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Fiction Friction
"There’s more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date," Philip Roth said in an interview with Cynthia Haven for Stanford's The Book Haven. Besides his retirement from writing, Roth also discussed why he doesn't consider himself an American-Jewish writer and his book The Ghost Writer. For more Roth, read our essay on lessons you can learn from his work.
Tuesday New Release Day
New this week: Gary Shteyngart's much buzzed about Super Sad True Love Story, Rick Moody's The Four Fingers of Death (another literary dystopia), and a new Roberto Bolaño collection, The Return. Bonus for GN'R fans: GN'R drummer Steven Adler's tell-all memoir My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N' Roses.
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“What they are, what they should be”
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DFW, Viking Enthusiast
The New Yorker gives us a glimpse of the David Foster Wallace papers just sold to the Harry Ransom Center, including the youthful "Viking Poem."
Royals
Make of this what you will, but when Lorde first read Year in Reading alum Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, it struck her as “the best collection [she’d] ever read.” Her interview with Tavi Gevinson in Rookie reveals that she also loves Raymond Carver and Claire Vaye Watkins.
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