The Australian Broadcasting Company’s radio program, The Book Show, invited Millions staff writer Michael Bourne to speak on the book app for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. To read Bourne’s Millions piece on the Kerouac book app, click here.
Bourne Speaks Aussie
Off to the Races
Following our coverage of the Man Booker Prize shortlist, it’s now time to place your bets on which book will eventually triumph. At The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker offers a tip based on previous winners: focus not on the book itself, but on its reviews.
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Basta
It’s rare that a writer decides his new novel will be his last, but that’s exactly what Michael Faber has done with regards to his latest, which comes out this week. In the Times, he talks with Alexandra Alter about his decision, saying: “I felt that I had one more book in me that could be special and sincere and extraordinary, and that that would be enough.” It’s probably a good time to read our own Bill Morris on the history of literary retirements.
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Populist Is Popular
“The demagogic spirit of the ‘radio priest’ Father Charles Coughlin and the ‘minister of hate’ Gerald L.K. Smith has been reborn in the candidacy of Donald Trump, just as the exhortations of the Louisiana boss and rabble-rouser Huey Long, who declared war on ‘the superrich’ and proposed a ‘Share Our Wealth Society,’ all but predicted Bernie Sanders’s attack on ‘the billionaire class.'” Examining what political books can tell us about the election season with Sam Tanenhaus at The New York Times.
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Elena Ferrante’s Writing Process, Translated
“Patriarchal domination, even — despite appearances — in the West, is still very entrenched, and each of us, in the most diverse places, in the most varied forms, suffers the humiliation of being a silent victim or a fearful accomplice or a reluctant rebel or even a diligent accuser of victims rather than of the rapists. Paradoxically, I don’t feel that there are great differences between the women of the Neapolitan neighborhood whose story I told and Hollywood actresses or the educated, refined women who work at the highest levels of our socioeconomic system. ” In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante discuses the #meToo movement, Naples and her writing process for the Neapolitan novels in a rare interview translated from the original French.
Brian Jacques, R.I.P.
Brian Jacques, whose Redwall series beginning with Redwall and Mossflower figured prominently in my life as a young reader, has died.
Book Picker Book Picker Pick Me A Book
It’s time for NPR‘s Book Concierge again! The interactive site will help you sort the year’s releases by about a gazillion criteria, including “book club ideas” and the seriously great “seriously great writing.”
Tuesday New Release Day: Millhauser, Matar, Shakar, Fuller, Chez Panisse
Steven Millhauser’s new collection We Others is out this week, as are Hisham Matar’s Anatomy of a Disappearance and Alex Shakar’s Luminarium. Here at The Millions, Shakar recently offered the harrowing story of the publication of his first novel. Alexandra Fuller has a new memoir out. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. and foodies are celebrating with 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering.
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