New this week is Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes (reviewed here) along with new story collections from E.L. Doctorow (All the Time in the World) and Jim Shepard (You Think That’s Bad). Also new this week is Kate Atkinson’s latest Jackson Brodie mystery Started Early, Took My Dog and Paul McEuen’s debut mixing “science and suspense” Spiral. Out in paperback is Millions Hall of Famer A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.
Tuesday New Release Day: Vowell, Doctorow, Shepard, Atkinson, McEuen, Egan
The City That Reads
Before adopting the relatively unimaginative (and highly debatable) moniker “The Greatest City in America,” Baltimore, MD was for a time known as “The City That Reads.” In an essay for Poets & Writers, Jen Michalski explains how the city’s bookish reputation endures despite the motto change.
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The Other Side
“Paris had more sex than most church-laden places, and more church than most sex-laden places.” Luc Sante’s new book, The Other Paris, seeks to uncover Paris’s sedimentary layers of filth and grit. Here he is in an interview with Guernica Magazine.
Appearing Elsewhere
My "10 Best Songs Based on Books" list, from yesterday's Observer (UK), is up on the Guardian's website. Obviously it's not so much the 10 Best as the 10 Best I could think of while writing the list, but that kind of equivocation makes for terribly unsnappy titles.
Making Connections
Books by Friends, a semi-regular feature at The Atlantic, sees writer James Fallows recommend the works of authors he knows. This week, he praises a book on the history of flight, a prediction for the economy and a jeremiad on American politics by Gary Hart. You could also read our own Kevin Hartnett on Fallows and American decline.
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“Vague enough to be useful”
At Full-Stop, Nicholson Baker talks with David Burr Gerard about his new novel, Henry James and the envy he feels for Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. (Related: our own Bill Morris reviewed Baker's House of Holes.)
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The 3 Quarks Daily annual Arts and Literature Prize!
The 3 Quarks Daily annual prize for Arts and Literature blog writing has been announced! Nominations are open in the comments of the announcement. This year's judge is author, professor, blogger, intellect Laila Lalami. Dear readers, feel free to nominate any Millions writing you enjoyed here. And to the guest contributors out there, be sure to nominate your Millions contributions!
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Stars and Bodies
Recommended listening: David Naimon interviews Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star, about "anorexia and astronomy, stars and bodies." Pair with Alex Norcia's Millions review of Gerard's novel here.
“Oh, you Irish—you’re such MAR-velous storytellers”
The Testament of Mary author Colm Tóibín was interviewed as part of the President’s Reading Series at Johns Hopkins University, and he spoke about the difference between “being a reader, and being an Irish reader.”
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