Sara Davidson’s Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion is an intimate portrait of one of America’s most revered and private writers.
Joan
Death and Dishonor
At Granta’s website, the novelist David McConnell explains his fascination with the “honor killing,” a hate crime targeted at gay men that inspired his latest book.
Booker Prize Shortlist Odds
With the Booker Prize shortlist out, the bookies have updated the odds. Tom McCarthy’s C emerges as the new favorite and Peter Carey and Andrea Levy are surprising long shots.
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Still I Rise
Maya Angelou reciting “Still I Rise“–in case you’re feeling be-Job-ed today and need of the consolation of literature or if you have doubts about the existence of true poetry in the present age. (Printed text of the poem is here.)
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Lost in the Archives
Charles Petersen traces the fascinating history of the New York Public Library to show the real cost of the planned renovations and the pitfalls of the inevitable digital libraries of the future. Mark Athitakis observes how archives flatten fictions with keywording.
Guns N’ Roses N’ Meth
In this piece on “Southern Enlightenment“, Kevin Charles Redmon checks out John Jeremiah Sullivan‘s Pulphead and Frank Bill‘s Crimes in Southern Indiana for The Rumpus. In the process, he touches on Axl Rose and methamphetamines.