In Salon, Laura Miller discusses the brave new world of self-publishing: “You’ve either experienced slush or you haven’t, and the difference is not trivial.”
Laura Miller on Self-Publishing
2014’s Best Book Covers
"What is the value of a book cover if fewer and fewer people shop at bookstores?" Nicholas Blechman wonders about the purpose of the book cover at The New York Times Book Review, but he also rounds up some of the best covers of 2014, including the design for Eimear McBride's A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing (Millions review here, McBride's "Year in Reading" here).
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Confessions of a Modern Opium Smoker
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Dickens wrote about opium smoking in their novels. But if you read the way they describe opium smoking, without a doubt these people never saw the real thing. It’s laughable…What we see in movies, even to this day, with the obligatory London opium-smoking scene is complete fiction." Interview with a modern-day opium addict.
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Color in Poetry
Recommended reading: "What is Color in Poetry" by Dorothea Lasky for Poetry. It's a lengthy article but a thoughtful one, and, as a bonus, it includes some of Lasky's childhood poetry. Pair with our earlier post about reading teenage poetry to crowds and you've got a theme for the day.
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Lupita Nyong’o + Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie + ‘Americanah’
In book-to-film news, Lupita Nyong'o has signed on to produce and star in an adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah, and we couldn't be more excited. For more from Adichie, be sure to check out her "Year in Reading" piece for The Millions.