SAT reading scores have fallen to their lowest level on record.
Reading Scores Fall
We Are Many. We Are Everywhere.
Roxane Gay rounded up a massive, crowdsourced list of writers of color. While the list is by no means exhaustive, it might be a necessary measure in proving “the world of letters is far more diverse than the publishing climate would lead us to believe.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Hensher, Smith, Morgenstern, Southgate
Booker-snubbed, but still widely anticipated, Philip Hensher's King of Badgers is out today. As are Ali Smith's There But for The, Erin Morgenstern's uber-hyped debut The Night Circus, and The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate, who wrote here about writers' work getting better as they get older.
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The PEN World Voices Line-Up
PEN World Voices, the great annual festival of International Literature, unveils this year's lineup for the week of April 26, in New York and elsewhere. Highlights include Norman Rush, Patti Smith, László Krasznahorkai, Rodrigo Frésan, and Sherman Alexie's "Freedom to Write" lecture.
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Friendly Neighborhood
Comics fans will know that a new Marvel storyline may -- just possibly -- reunite Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. This has, understandably, produced a range of reactions, not least of which is this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who argues that the two embody a healthy marriage. “[Their] marriage was a rejection of the macho ideal of romance—which reigns even among nerds—and it mirrored and confirmed my own budding sense of what love was at a very young age,” he writes. You could also read Paul Morton on the character of Peter Parker.
BookExpo America
John Green, Tina Fey, and "a book-swapping/speed-dating cocktail hour": BookExpo America has taken over Manhattan's Javitz Center, and if you live anywhere near New York we think you might want to check out the public BookCon event this Saturday. We're not saying you'll meet the love of your life, but maybe you'll win the Hunger Games trivia contest.
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Different Times
Last week, I wrote about Josh Weil and Mike Harvkey’s joint book tour, which sees the two driving a Prius across America to promote their latest novels. Now, in their latest dispatch, they reflect on the differences between writers like themselves and midcentury writers like Andre Dubus and Norman Mailer.
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Runways for Days
"I took my son to Paris fashion week, and all I got was a profound understanding of who he is, what he wants to do with his life, and how it feels to watch a grown man stride down a runway wearing shaggy yellow Muppet pants." Michael Chabon writes a beautiful piece for GQ about going couturing with his son, Abraham. Pair with yesterday's essay by R. J. Hernández on fashion in literary fiction.