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.
Tuesday New Release Day
Searching for Florida
“The older I get, the more my own boundaries seem to be fading, which is terrifying and fascinating in equal measure.” For The Paris Review, Lucie Shelly interviewed Lauren Groff about nature, spirituality, and her newest collection, Florida. (Our review called the collection “startling and precious.”)
Sarah M. Broom’s New Orleans
In her debut memoir, The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom writes vividly of her childhood in New Orleans East and charts the city's drastic changes over the decades.
●
●
●
The Private, Intimate Sphere
Read Karl Ove Knausgaard’s acceptance speech for the Welt Literaturpreis, an annual prize awarded by the German newspaper Die Welt, at The New Yorker. He writes, “The difference between engaging with a real neighbor and one in a novel is that the former occurs in the social sphere, within the boundaries of its rules and practical constraints, whereas the latter occurs outside of it, in the reader’s own most private, intimate sphere, where the rules that govern our social interaction do not apply and its practical constraints do not exist.” You could also check out Knausgaard’s book excerpt at The Millions.
Give the Gift of Dalkey
It’s that time of year again. Dalkey Archive’s annual holiday sale is upon us. Grab 10 books for $65, or 20 books for $120 — and that includes shipping!
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Friends Forever
Attention Babysitters Club fans: at 5:30 EST tonight, Scholastic will be holding a live Twitter party with author Ann M. Martin. Maybe it’s finally time to find out if Claudia ever finished middle school, yes / yes?
Top Longreads of 2011
They say you’re only as good as the company you keep. If that’s the case, we’re thrilled to have published Jim Santel‘s piece on The Moviegoer, which has made The Awl staff’s list of “Top Longreads of 2011“.
●
●
“Which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism”
Much fuss was made about Barack Obama’s ex-girlfriends this week, as an excerpt from David Maraniss’ forthcoming Barack Obama: The Story was published in Vanity Fair. Of course, we sophisticated book readers care less about the man’s old flames than we do his literary pursuits, right? That’s why Mr. President’s analysis of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” is so interesting.
I would be more interested in reading the making of the Adler book, what went on between him and his ghost writer, because if there’s one thing I am absolutely sure about it’s that Adler cannot write, let alone form a coherent thought.