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
Playboy and Madame Bovary
Macy Halford at Book Bench imagines Playboy as the Madame Bovary of the 1950s.
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Some Dry Reading Material
Wednesdays, right? Well, make your Hump Day a little more productive by perusing the digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. (via)
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August Open Letters
The August issue of Open Letters is available. Nestled amidst the literary fare are early Oscar nominations from Sarah Hudson and a piece on the video game The Sims by Phillip A. Lobo.
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The IMPAC Dublin Longlist
As of this morning, the 2014 IMPAC Dublin longlist is out, and the titles that made the final cut are an eclectic assortment. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (which we reviewed) made the cut, as did The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (which won the Pulitzer earlier this year) and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (which won the Booker Prize).
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Tuesday New Release Day: Ford; Satyal; Ko; Ferris; Paul; Koul; Ibrahim; Menkedick; Achebe
Out this week: Between Them by Richard Ford; No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal; The Leavers by Lisa Ko; The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris; My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul; One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul; Season of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim; Homing Instincts by Sarah Menkedick; and a new edition of Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Uncommon Thrills
In the Times Book Review, Year in Reading alum and Edinburgh author Alexander Chee reviews Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, a Millions contributor. He describes the book as, among other things, a departure from your average literary thriller: “If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction, not until now.”
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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.