Three Guys One Book wonders why publishers aren’t more aggressive about drumming up pre-publication hype, instead admonishing media outlets to hold their coverage until after the books are published.
Recalibrating the Hype Game
On Doormats and Shoes
At Page-Turner, our own Mark O’Connell notes “a thrilling obscenity” in the works of Gonçalo M. Tavares, a Portuguese writer whose recent novel, Jerusalem, depicts a character with schizophrenia. A lesser-known symptom of the illness, apparently, is a tendency to treat inanimate objects like conscious (and social) beings. (We wrote about Tavares back in March.)
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It’s Tuesday! It’s New Releases
The long, long awaited posthumous publication of Ralph Ellison’s Three Days Before the Shooting… has arrived. Also newly out today (in the States) is William Boyd’s Ordinary Thunderstorms.
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Welcome Dixon Bean Brown!
The Millions family keeps getting bigger! A big welcome to our newest Millions reader: Dixon Bean Brown born June 22nd to our long-time staff writers Edan Lepucki and Patrick Brown.
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Laura Miller on Self-Publishing
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.”
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Alice Walker on Screen
Still deciding what to do this Friday night? Watch PBS’s new documentary on Alice Walker, Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth, at 9 p.m. EST. At The Daily Beast, Agunda Okeyo discusses the history of the film’s production, which took six years. “Stories about women of color told by women of color are sidelined and neglected in favor of our stories being told by white women and men,” director Pratibha Parmar says.
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