Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is now out in the U.S. Also new this week are John D’Agata’s much-discussed Lifespan of a Fact, Sarah Manguso’s The Guardians, Ellen Ullman’s By Blood and The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert, who has an essay up on our site today. The new memoir by Anthony Shadid has seen its release date pushed up to this week. See our remembrance of Shadid. Finally, it’s Christmas for baseball fans: the 2012 Baseball Prospectus is out.
Tuesday New Release Day: Edugyan, D’Agata, Manguso, Ullman, Herbert, Shadid, Baseball
Summer Poems from Charles Simic
Recommended Listening: Charles Simic reads five new poems for The Southern Review’s summer podcast.
●
●
Words of the Year Watch, Con’t
Two more words of the year as 2016 comes to a close: Merriam-Webster has chosen “surreal” while The Guardian, in an act of timeliness, nominates “unpresidented.”
●
●
Dividing Lines
In spite of the title of her blog post, Lily Meyer doesn’t think Ann Patchett is really an enemy of Zadie Smith. Instead, she thinks the two authors play opposing roles in her life, thanks largely to the different effects their books have on her perceptions. At the Ploughshares blog, she contrasts their novels, using excerpts from White Teeth and Bel Canto. Related: Kevin Charles Redmon’s review of Patchett’s novel State of Wonder.
●
●
You Would Prefer Not To… Miss This.
Thursday 11/10, come on down to 60 Wall Street for a marathon reading of Herman Melville‘s Bartleby, the Scrivener. The story was in part tied to the Occupy Wall Street movement by Hannah Gerson in a great piece for us last month.
●
●
On Children’s Lit
●
●
Dolly Parton’s Song Roars with Need / And Envy
The University of Tennessee will offer history students a seminar on Dolly Parton’s life, so this is as good a time as any to revisit Sherman Alexie’s poem, “Ode to Jolene.”