New releases this week: All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang, “a writing-school success story” according to the New York Times in its review, Obama’s Wars, the latest book by legendary reporter Bob Woodward, Listen to This, a collection of essays published by music critic Alex Ross during his 12-year career at The New Yorker, and (almost new) is David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, as reviewed by Rayyan Al-Shawaf for The Millions.
Tuesday New Release Day
Bibliophilic Crack
In the spring of 2006, John Unsworth taught a graduate seminar on “Twentieth-Century American Bestsellers.” It led to one of history’s finest class projects–a browsable database of bestsellers, 337 in all. As with any bestseller lists, you’ll find a range of titles, everything from Thomas Wolfe to Tom Clancy, but click through and find that each entry includes an extremely detailed description of the book’s history (these were compiled by graduate students, after all); a mini-essay on its reception; images of covers, page layouts, and even some ads; and more. It is, in short, bibliophilic crack. (Thanks Craig)
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Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Dubus, Freeman, Boyd, Zoller-Seitz
New this week: The Circle by Dave Eggers; Dirty Love by Andre Dubus III; How to Read a Novelist by former Granta editor John Freeman; Solo, a new James Bond novel by William Boyd; and “the first in-depth overview of Wes Anderson’s filmography” by the New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller-Seitz.
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You Go, Girl
We’re a little late to the party on this one, but the Masterpiece adaptation of Little Dorrit won (and probably deserved) more Emmys than any other show this year. In your face, Gandolfini!
Banned Books Week
Comic of the Week: Over at Electric Lit, check out Grant Snider’s comic on why we ban books. We look at The Lorax and other dangerous books in honor of Banned Books Week.
Sarah M. Broom on Unfinished Work
"The unfinished work is no less real, or necessary, or powerful than the book," Broom says in a recent Whiting Foundation speech.
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Writing for Their Lives
Over at Bloom check out this 3-part feature—a conversation and excerpts—on fiction writers-cum-memoirists Robin Black (If I Loved You I Would Tell You This, Life Drawing) and Natalie Serber (Shout Her Lovely Name)—former classmates at the Warren Wilson low-res MFA program, both later-life bloomers, and both “writing for their lives” in new memoirs.
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Most Anticipated Addenda
Conversational Reading has put together its own “most anticipated” books list that has some overlap with our own. It’s also worth noting that the trend of posthumous publication noted in our Most Anticipated introduction, was plumbed with considerably more depth at The Quarterly Conversation last year.