“We call this fandemonium”

Are people losing interest in fiction that “offers more questions than answers?”  In her book Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Jane Smiley suggested that modern readers have little taste  for uncertainty. At The Rumpus, Rob Roberge asks how much this contributes to popular disinterest in literature.

Last Friday marked the feast day of Francis de Sales, better known as the patron saint of writers and journalists. The saint, who lived in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, got his title thanks to his propensity for using flyers and pamphlets to convert people to Catholicism. At The Paris Review Daily, Dan Piepenbring reads the saint’s most famous work, Introduction to the Devout Life.

The Rumpus interviews Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief & most recently Rin Tin Tin) about her obsession with other people’s obsessions.

Look, we know it’s nice to read highbrow literary fiction all the time, but sometimes you need a break. Luckily, here is a helpful list of the best illustrated children’s books of 2016 from the folks over at The New York Times.

New this week: Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov; The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger; Hyde by Daniel Levine; Cambridge by Girl, Interrupted author Susanna Kaysen; Decoded by Mai Jia; Visible City by Tova Mirvis; The Moon Before Morning by W.S. Merwin; and Caribou by Charles Wright.