Amazon just picked its 2011 “Best Books of the Year So Far.”
Best Books ‘So Far’
“The chorus needs to be real to make this work.”
Millions staffer Edan Lepucki contributed “Chorus” to Slate‘s Trump Story Project, an ongoing series of short fiction pieces written by contemporary authors.
Satire and Self-Laceration
At The Rumpus, a chat with the poet Randall Mann, whose new book, Straight Razor, came out last week. Among the more interesting tidbits revealed in the interview: Mann’s father was an Olympic silver medalist.
A subject “simply too controversial for the university”
As noted on Arts & Letters Daily, Yale’s decision to shutter its Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism raises the question, “Where does scholarship end and advocacy begin?”
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Do You Listen to Your Hunch?
Complex problems do not necessarily need complex solutions, and more detailed analysis does not necessarily improve a decision, but often makes it worse. In other words: sometimes it’s better to listen to your gut. What do you do?
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The Great Debates
Christopher Beha just finished reading the complete works of Henry James and writes for The New Yorker about the experience while also touching on both “The Great Y.A.” and “The Great Goldfinch” debates.
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Recommended Reading: Yoko Ogawa
Recommended Reading: Hotel Iris author Yoko Ogawa’s fiction in Guernica, “The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger.”
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“Afro Picks” Image & Pun Draws Criticism
The cover image of this week’s Publisher’s Weekly, which centers around an annual feature on African American book publishing, is drawing a lot of attention, mostly negative. Read PW senior news editor Calvin Reid‘s explanation/mea culpa.
