Dearest readers, the voting is now open in the 3 Quarks Daily Arts & Literature prize judged by Laila Lalami. Read and vote for your favorite piece from The Millions here!
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2014’s Best Book Covers
“What is the value of a book cover if fewer and fewer people shop at bookstores?” Nicholas Blechman wonders about the purpose of the book cover at The New York Times Book Review, but he also rounds up some of the best covers of 2014, including the design for Eimear McBride‘s A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing (Millions review here, McBride’s “Year in Reading” here).
Karen Russell and the Hungry Ghosts
Karen Russell recounts finishing her book in the midst of pregnancy, and the financial and time calculations that must be done to get to that last page.
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Brilliant Friends
“There has been a growth in the literary depiction of a particular type of friendship, one that has in the past found itself vulnerable to dilution and deflection by the ostensibly more powerful imperatives of heterosexuality and motherhood.” On literary female friendships, from Virginia Woolf to Elena Ferrante and Year in Reading alumna Zadie Smith.
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Pig Tales
“I move in a desultory society and often a week or two will roll by without my going to anybody’s house to dinner or anyone’s coming to mine, but when an occasion does arise, and I am summoned, something usually turns up (an hour or two in advance) to make all human intercourse seem vastly inappropriate.” In the new issue of The Atlantic Weekly (not to be confused with the Monthly), a reprint of a classic E.B. White essay.
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Let the Wild Rumpus Begin
Dave Eggers shares the skinny on his forthcoming Where the Wild Things Are project – including an excerpt of the novel and the killer trailer for the movie version – with The New Yorker.