Two off-site appearances in as many months from our otherwise relatively reclusive editor, C. Max Magee? And both times invoking the theme of lost adolescence? Something’s afoot! Last month, Max dropped by The Morning News‘ booth for the Tournament of Books’ zombie round, and now he’s joining a star-studded cast at The Awl to answer the question, “What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?”
Cringe-Inducing Books & Growing Up
Putin’s Call for a Russian Canon
The process of "Russification" is almost as old as Russia itself, yet to see it take shape in the present day can be quite distressing. In particular, Vladimir Putin's recent proposal in Nezavisimaya Gazeta -- in which the prime minister called for a "Russian canon" of literary works -- has some people worried about its insidious potential for propaganda. Count Alexander Nazaryan among that group.
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Self Publishing Textbooks
A Minnesota high school is saving money on textbooks... by writing its own.
E-Books Upend Publishing Class
A Columbia University course that has taught generations of bright-eyed would-be Maxwell Perkins the ins and outs of the New York publishing biz has had to retool its curriculum to account for the e-book phenomenon, the New York Times reports.
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Emergent Criticism
The National Book Critics Circle has announced its inaugural class of Emerging Critics, including our own Ismail Muhammad! Read his first piece for us, "Frank Ocean and the Black Male Body," here.
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VIDA Shall Be Pleased
By happy accident, the third issue of Brooklyn-based lit mag Armchair/Shotgun (which uses an anonymous submissions system) is composed entirely of female writers. Issues are available for online purchase. EDIT: Following our update, the publication put out a notice on how the "all-female-writers issue" issue came to be.
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Pythonated
We’ve published a fair number of pieces about the import of book covers. You may have read one of our US-UK book cover battles. Over at The Awl, Amanda Pickering takes a look at one of the stranger aspects of book design: the animals that appear on the covers of programming books.
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