New this week is The Tiger’s Wife, the hotly anticipated debut of Téa Obreht, the youngest of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 from last year. Also new in the fiction aisle is Carol Edgarian’s Three Stages of Amazement. David Brooks’s latest pop sociology effort The Social Animal is now out — this one, excerpted in the New Yorker — sets itself apart from similar tomes by illustrating its findings through a pair of fictional characters. Now out in paperback are National Book Award winner Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, Ian McEwan’s Solar, and Rebecca Skloot’s non-fiction blockbuster The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Tuesday New Release Day: Obreht, Edgarian, Brooks, Gordon, McEwan, Skloot
The International Literary Film Festival
“The International Literary Film Festival (InLiFiFe) shows films from around the world that are about literature.” The festival will commence in Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater on Monday, November 14th, at 7:30 pm with Luca Dipierro and Michael Kimball‘s 60 Writers / 60 Places.
Staying Sharp
“There tends to be this idea that every piece and every assignment and every gig is always something speaking from the soul. We think that about great writers, that they’re incapable of doing hackwork.” The Rumpus interviewed Michelle Dean about women writers, the research process, and her forthcoming book, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. Pair with: Dean’s 2016 Year in Reading entry.
e. e. cummings or YouTuber?
In honor of National Poetry Month, revisit a McSweeney’s article on whether a YouTube commenter or e. e. cummings wrote this line of poetry. Our piece on author parochialism pairs nicely.
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Take It to the Bank
It’s notoriously difficult to figure out how to make a living as a freelance writer. The process forces the writer to learn the finer points of negotiation. At the Ploughshares blog, Steph Auteri writes about the “abstract mathematics” of her freelance career, presenting a list of everything she considers before taking on an assignment. Pair with: our own Nick Ripatrazone on teaching the business of creative writing.
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Poetry Machine
Villanelle Bot, a Twitter bot that composes poems in villanelle form, is publishing the automated poetry on their blog. The bot uses Twitter posts from random people, then stitches together all lines that end in certain words to form a full poem. You could also check out our piece on the best of literary Twitter.
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Your Literary Superpower
Does reading a novel for a few hours make you feel smarter? You’re not alone: a new study suggests that reading novels heightens activity in the left temporal cortex, also known as the part of the brain associated with receptivity to language. The best part? The changes last for five days.
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Also out in paperback today: the Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. And tomorrow, Next by James Hynes