The Tournament of Books declares a winner! It was down to two in the last round: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (called “big, messy, flawed, enraging, and engrossing” by C. Max Magee, one of the final round judges) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (which “ached with feeling and tension…”) Find out who won at The Morning News!
The Tournament of Books Declares a Winner!
Type Setting
In a clip The Atlantic calls “technology porn for book lovers,” you can see how manuscripts became books in the 1940s.
Rion Amilcar Scott on the Comforting Familiarity of Clichés
Rion Amilcar Scott explores how the familiarity of clichés can comfort those in the midst of grieving
●
●
●
Novelistic Ambitions
David Kurnick explores what makes Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels so addictive. As he puts it, “In Ferrante we see what grand novelistic ambition looks like devoid of writerly vanity.” Pair with Cora Currier’s essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
●
●
Valeria Luiselli on Writing Through the Pandemic
Valeria Luiselli on the importance of writers documenting this moment in time, at their own pace and within their own capacity.
●
●
●
The Books That Break Reading Slumps
Michael Seidlinger asks authors about the books and writers that got them out of particularly tough reading slumps.
●
●
●
Huh?
We’ve been discussing the changing nature of the English language a lot here this week (from the rise of public English to the acceptance of “like”), but if there is one thing that’s consistent in language, it’s the word “huh.” Linguists have studied 31 languages that all contain the interjection, making it one of the first universal words.