Here are the first lines of the new Gary Shteyngart novel, Super Sad True Love Story, forthcoming in July: “Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die. Others will die around me. They will be nullified. Nothing of their personality will remain. The light switch will be turned off.”
First Lines of the New Gary Shteyngart
Reading Tonight at Housing Works
New York-area readers are invited to come tonight to Housing Works bookstore in SoHo, where I’ll be appearing at 7 p.m. alongside the Norwegian wunderkind Johan Harstad. We’ll be reading from and discussing A Field Guide to the North American Family and Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? Music courtesy of Brooklyn’s The Sweaters (not to be confused with The Cardigans.)
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Some Links
“I’ve never actually read the books that I’ve blurbed.” – Nick Tosches in BookforumThat terrific Kenneth Tynan piece on Johnny Carson that Tingle was looking for.Want to bone up on philosophy, but can’t quite find the time? Try Squashed Philosophers.The CS Monitor gives capsule reviews of the NBCC fiction finalists, in case you didn’t get to any of them.O, Brother, Where Art Thou? Oh Right, Everywhere: Discarded titles for George Orwell’s 1984 at McSweeney’s (via Kottke).David Sedaris’ recommended reading list
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Sonia Sanchez’s Essential Black Literature
Sonia Sanchez shares her picks for the essential books of Black Literature, including Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Zora Neale Hurston, and more.
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The New Vintage
Is hardcover the new vinyl? Over at The Literary Hub, Yahdon Israel argues for the irreplaceable magic of tactility and print books: “There’s something gratifying about being able to underline a sentence or write a response in the margin of a book, knowing with certainty that it will be there later. I can’t get that guarantee from a phone. My data could be hacked, a new upgrade could wipe its memory, my battery could die mid-sentence and cause me to lose everything I’ve typed. They say that what goes up into the Cloud must come down, but ‘they’ can’t always be trusted—least of all with the things I value most, my books.”
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Huck Finn, Improved
Cartoonist Ruben Bolling has identified some additional ways in which Huck Finn might be cleaned up for today’s delicate readers.
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Night Shade Books Gets Shady
A publishing flap in three parts, with colons. 1: Publisher’s Weekly details unsettling allegations about Night Shade Books — an unwillingness to answer calls from writers or their agents, stolen digital rights, and missing royalty statements. 2: Night Shade issues an apology. 3: A wronged writer responds.
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Two Previously Unpublished Lucile Clifton Poems Make Their Debut
Dive into summer with two never-before-seen poems by award-winning poet, Lucille Clifton: "poem to my yellow coat" and "bouquet."
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I like this whole first line from upcoming books thing you have going on. These first lines do not make me want to read this book, though. Too precious.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to see the phrase “new Gary Shteyngart novel”!
It wasn’t on most of those “books we’re excited about next year lists”, so a welcome surprise. Plus, it’s a heckuva sentence.
Oh boy! Another kinda creepy, sorta funny, odd, quirky wild ride. Never underestimate the guy who wrote the greatest circumcision story of all time.