Are You Feeling Lucky?

The al-Qarawiyyin library, the oldest library in the world, has just reopened after years of renovations. Take a look inside. Andrew Pippos writes about private libraries and what they reveal about their readers.

Frank McNally investigates the “dark forces at work somewhere” that prevent Flann O’Brien from being honored with a Dublin bridge. Perhaps we should all start a grassroots campaign to send Mark O’Connell’s O’Brien tribute to Irish civil engineers.

Out this week: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier; Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi; The Awkward Age by Francesca Segal; The Australian by Emma Smith-Stevens; Evensong by Kate Southwood; Behind the Moon by Madison Smartt Bell; and Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.

Better late than never, here are eight great new books for Urban Homesteaders.

Recommended Reading: On Chuck Tingle, self-published writer of gay erotica, who beat the notorious Sad Puppies at their own game: "Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?"

Do you think J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace should be made into a movie starring John Malkovich?  Someone does--see the trailer here.