Claudia Roth Pierpont writes about the contemporary Arabic novel in this week’s New Yorker, highlighting Iraqi, Palestinian, and Egyptian examples.
Contemporary Arabic Novels
On Book Reviews
Kyle Minor (In the Devil’s Territory) has written a delightful list of “Five Hazards of the Book Review Biz” for HTMLGiant.
The Last Samurai
Recommended Reading: On Helen DeWitt’s novel The Last Samurai and how it cultivates ambition in its readers.
●
●
One-Night Reads
“Ever since, I have added a new layer of rules for my casual sex partners, especially when I end up in their space: I ask them for a book prior to exiting. I might phrase it more diplomatically, saying ‘I just want to read something on my train-ride back,’ or ‘I just finished my last book and I have been looking for the next one.’ Via this simple action I can estimate a lot more on a broad scale of very personal information and variation of taste than what I could possibly collect through hours of post-coital, emotional interrogation.” Seven books Elias Tezapsidis acquired through casual sex.
●
●
Welcome to Wild West Egg
You are hotshot Nick Carraway in the 8-bit Nintendo version of The Great Gatsby. Don’t ask questions…just click “z” to shoot.
You Down with OED? Yeah, You Know Me.
“I’ve been hailed as a hero (hipster poets love me), gotten the rock star reception (by research librarians), and been dismissed with derision, thought possibly to be deranged,” says Jon Danzinger. So what’s his job, you might ask? He’s a researcher for the Oxford English Dictionary.
●
●
Struck by Lightning
“Once certain hurdles are cleared (a bit of talent, years of work), being a writer is like flying a kite in a storm in a field full of people flying kites in a storm.” Garth Greenwell on writing his first novel, the importance of failure, and giving oneself privacy to make mistakes. Pair with Meredith Turits’s Millions piece, featuring six writers looking back on their first novels.
●
●