Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows (which was a favorite of Jonathan Safran Foer), floats a new idea to publishers: give away your e-books for free!
Fre-books
A Poet in Need
Friends, former students and admirers are rallying around poet Dean Young. Young, who has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a number of other MFA programs, is in need of a heart transplant, and fellow poet Tony Hoagland has put out a call for help. (Thanks Arna)
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LMC Revival
Anyone interested in up-and-coming literary magazines should check out HTMLGiant's Roxane Gay's Literary Magazine Club. The next magazine will be Beecher's, which has just released its first issue.
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To Paraphrase Potter Stewart
“The more you take, the more you have to give back — the better the work has to be.” The New York Times features Year in Reading alum Rivka Galchen in dialogue with Anna Holmes (“You can’t always prove appropriation, but you usually know it when you see it”) on the distinction between artistic license and cultural theft. Pair with our review of Galchen's Little Labors.
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The Marriage Playlist
What do Talking Heads, The Smiths, Judas Priest, and Blondie have in common? They’re all featured in the playlist Picador made to accompany the paperback release of Jeffrey Eugenides's latest novel, The Marriage Plot. The Spotify list is chock full of songs “Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell might have been listening to in the early 1980s.” You can read Eugenides’s take on the book’s genesis over here, too.
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Twerking with Morgan Freeman
You might have heard that "twerk" (among other words) has been added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online. But you probably didn't hear Morgan Freeman reading the definition aloud.
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