“It is all bricolage for personal identity building,” says Rob Horning of N+1, providing a somewhat bleak image of the “fast fashion” industry and social media, and what can be expected from the future.
Branded
Murakami Controversy
Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood has been dropped from one New Jersey school’s syllabus due to “some words and language that seemed to be inappropriate as far as the parents and some of the kids were concerned.” His publisher A. A. Knopf has issued a statement in response.
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All Toured Out
There are book tours and then there are book tours. You either get the full-scale, all-expenses-paid treatment from your publisher, or else you get a request to plan it all and pay for it all yourself. In the weeks after his latest novel came out, our own Bill Morris set off on a DIY tour — all driving, no flying — about which he’s been writing dispatches for The Daily Beast. This week, he thinks about the changing nature of book promotion, recounts his nights in dumpy motels and compares his experience to that of our own Edan Lepucki. (FYI, they talked about writing their novels in a Millions piece.)
Theories of the Brain
Recommended (Heavy) Reading: A mind-bending interview with Kathinka Evers at 3:AM Magazine on the increasingly important field of “neuroethics.” Neuroethics is, in essence, “the study of the questions that arise when scientific findings about the brain are carried into philosophical analyses, medical practice, legal interpretations, health and social policy.” Welcome to the 21st century.
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World Book Night
A committee headed by the author Tracy Chevalier this week unveiled the lineup of twenty-five specially printed titles which will be distributed by thousands of volunteers across the UK on April 23, 2012 as part of an international celebration of reading.
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Elected
J.K. Rowling says Donald Trump is worse than Voldemort. The Harry Potter author has come out against the presidential hopeful, tweeting that “Voldemort was nowhere near as bad.” Yes, she even said his name.
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Looking for Some Literary Tumblrs?
For bookish Tumblrs, I suggest you start following Awesome People Reading, Writers No One Reads, and CoverSpy.
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Bound
“Think the kennel partner was a man? Think he was, in Braverman’s telling, threatened by her success? You are correct. There are so many stories like this, in Double Bind, of ambition built up and then put in its place: the high school classmate who sneered to Roxane Gay, when he learned that she’d been accepted to Yale when he had not, ‘affirmative action.'”
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