Our own Emily St. John Mandel won one of the inaugural Indie Booksellers’ Choice Awards yesterday for her novel The Singer’s Gun. The other honorees for this award, which was voted on by indie booksellers around the country, were Paolo Bacigalupi for The Windup Girl, Adam Levin for The Instructions, Karl Marlantes for Matterhorn, and Nina Revoyr for Wingshooters.
Indie Booksellers’ Choice Awards
Toni Morrison in Her Own Words
A new documentary pays tribute to Toni Morrison's illustrious, inspiring career and gives the author a chance to reflect on her decades of writing.
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Some links: Penguin Podcast, Lawyers on Google Print, Chicago Literature
Penguin Books UK has started a podcast. I’ve added it to my Literary Podcasts post. (via)Law blog Groklaw has a good post explaining the Google Print project and the controversy surrounding it, and Lawrence Lessig has news of a program coming up at the New York Public Library on November 17 called “The Battle Over Books: Authors and Publishers Take on the Google Print Project.”Golden Rule Jones has a list of this year’s Chicago fiction, and at Pete Lit, Pete tells us about Chicago Noir, a collection edited by Neal Pollock with stories by Adam Langer, Kevin Guilfoile and others.
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Siiiick
Gnarly, dude: Leanne Shapton’s reading her new book at a surf shop.
The End of the Poe Vigil
It’s been nearly three years since an unknown man last marked Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday by leaving three roses and cognac at Poe’s grave. Today is Poe’s birthday and “Poe fans are planning one last vigil this week before calling an end” to the decades-long tradition of watching the mystery mourner pay his respects. (via)
Pynchon Possessed by the Spirit of a Teenaged Girl
“Though female authors write experimental novels about women—like Renata Adler’s Speedboat or Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?—the avant-garde has long been associated with male authors and stories. That association made Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine seem doubly unusual.” On Kleeman’s debut novel and blatantly feminine themes in the avant-garde.
“Hardly Shakesperean at first”
Recommended Reading: Ted Widmer on the miscellaneous writings of Abraham Lincoln.
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