Kindle users can start borrowing e-books from their local libraries. This seems innocuous enough. But what about the proliferation of textbook rentals (e.g. the type on Chegg)? Some believe it may put us on the road to serfdom.
Checking Out And Renting
Writing For Your Life
“I think essay and memoir hang together in a balance. There’s any number of ways to strike it, but from Montaigne on down that balance seems key to their design.” The Paris Review interviews the essayist Michelle Orange, author of the recent This Is Running For Your Life.
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Analyzing the Scumbag Brain
Jessica Love explores a little of the science behind every weary reader’s nemesis: zoning out.
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Remembering Ronan
Almost a year ago, Emily Rapp’s son Ronan passed away from Tay-Sachs disease. At The Rumpus, Rapp discusses her loss and how it affects her current pregnancy. “A boy was born in the world, already doomed by genetics, in March 2010. A girl, if all goes well, will be born in the world in March 2014, and born to do what?”
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The Mingle, Part III
Mark your calendars, New Yorkers. The third installment of Ryan Chapman and Jason Diamond’s inimitable networking shindigs will take place on Thursday, July 25th at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Come for the craic and the free booze, but stay for the balloons.
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Do I Dare to Eat a Banana?
“She didn’t even want to be anything. She just wanted to be able to sit in a room and not feel tortured by it, which is sort of the human condition in general. Eileen isn’t dreaming of leaving home and making it in the big city on Broadway. She just wants to go and eat a banana, you know?” Ottessa Moshfegh on her new novel, Eileen, for The Rumpus.
Tuesday New Release Day: Feldman; Thornton; Akhtiorskaya; La Seur; Bloom; Harkaway
Out this week: The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman; Charleston by Margaret Bradham Thornton; Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya; The Home Place by Carrie La Seur; Lucky Us by Amy Bloom; and Tigerman by Nick Harkaway (which I wrote about for our Great 2014 Book Preview).
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Mutual Self-Interest in Bad Decline
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, America needs George Saunders. Fortunately, the editors at The New Yorker’s Shouts and Murmurs blog appear to understand this.
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If public libraries cannot lend eBooks, it is only a matter of time before “your local library” is converted into a Starbucks. I wish this were not the case, I’m a librarian and I hate to think that libraries would be so quickly dismissed, but it is the reality of the situation. If you want to live in a world with public libraries, you should be grateful for, if not celebrate, Amazon’s contract with Overdrive.