Equal parts voyeuristically indulgent and unapologetically stimulating, Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books is the second installment in Yale University Press’s ongoing series, a journey into the personal libraries of thirteen favorite authors. This installment? Alison Bechdel, Stephen Carter, Junot Díaz, Rebecca Goldstein, and more.
Writers and Their Books
Bigwig Book Collectors
Gary Shteyngart, Philip Pullman, James Wood, and three other literary bigwigs share their book-collecting habits.
Writing About Suicide
Recommended reading: Philip Connors, whose memoir All the Wrong Places was included in our 2015 Book Preview, writes for the New Yorker about his brother’s death and the problems with “cathartic” writing.
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A Little Day in the Life
“To Yanagihara, the commitment to journalism is a vital expression of the practical side of her nature: she likes the adrenaline of short deadlines and the satisfaction of making a new product each week.” The Guardian profiles Hanya Yanagihara about her life, fiction, and day job as the editor of T magazine, the New York Times style supplement. From our archives: The Millions’ interview with the acclaimed novelist.
Ben Lerner’s Nightstand
Ben Lerner, whose 10:04 has been reviewed in Bookforum and the New York Times, made an appearance on The New Directions blog to recommend four books of poetry that have at one point or another graced his nightstand. (No word on how he winnows down his list of books to be stacked on said nightstand, but our own Sonya Chung can offer advice.)
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Tuesday New Release Day: Newitz; O’Rourke; Kent; Peery; McDermott
Out this week: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz; Sun in Days by Meghan O’Rourke; The Good People by Hannah Kent; The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery; and The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
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Literary Resolutions
The new year is, of course, a time for resolutions, and Electric Literature has collected literary resolutions from Alexander Chee, Year in Reading alum Emily Gould, Yelena Akhtiorskaya, and many more. Coming out of the hectic holiday season, Jonathan Lee‘s resolution seems particularly apt: “My literary new year’s resolution is to read slower. I want to try and re-discover the kind of reading where you savor every page instead of thinking about unread emails, progress through the book, progress through the to-be-read pile, and the quantity of remaining tea bags in cupboard.”
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