The gorgeous paperback edition of our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s A Field Guide to the North American Family is now out. Also new and noteworthy are Francisco Goldman’s New Yorker excerpted story of the death of his young wife Say Her Name, Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling, Ann Packer’s Swim Back to Me, Blake Butler’s There is No Year, and Phillip Connors’s intriguing debut, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout. Elsewhere, we’ve got Tina Fey’s raved about memoir Bossypants and a new and long in the works biography of Malcolm X, whose author, Manning Marable died just last week on the eve of the book’s publication. Finally, now out in paperback is the fiction blockbuster The Help.
Tuesday New Release Day: Hallberg, Goldman, Wolitzer, Packer, Butler, Connors, Fey and More
A Great Career
Back in May, our own Sonya Chung reviewed All That Is, the first novel in 35 years by A Sport and a Pastime author James Salter. For another viewpoint (courtesy of the LRB), check out James Meek’s assessment of the book alongside Salter’s Collected Stories.
●
●
Coming Soon: Beautiful Ruins
Todd Field, who directed In the Bedroom and Little Children, is going to bring Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins to the big screen. The book was a big favorite among this year’s Year In Reading contributors.
●
●
Ray Harryhausen Dies at 92
Visual effects virtuoso Ray Harryhausen died this week at the age of 92. Harryhausen was first inspired to take up movie-making when he watched King Kong with his childhood friend Ray Bradbury, and his pioneering career spanned over forty years. Over at Vulture, you can check out a couple of his most well-known scenes. To my mind, though, his best work will always remain Galgo’s creepy, stretch-tastic wizard hand from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Jason Epstein on Charlie Rose
Jason Epstein, editor of literary and culinary greats (Norman Mailer, Alice Waters), co-founder of the NYRB, and life-long food lover talks with Charlie Rose about his latest book, Eating: A Memoir, and the past and future of book publishing.
●
●
Modern Makerspaces
Recommended Reading: Public libraries are becoming gateways to technological invention.
●
●
Head in a Book
Pen, paper, and a brain scan: the newest trend in literary criticism might be “neurohumanities.”
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Boyle, Marai, Baseball
New this week in the fiction aisle are T.C. Boyle’s When the Killing’s Done (our review) and Sandor Marai’s Portraits of a Marriage. Also, baseball fans, the 2011 Prospectus is out today.