Alison Flood highlights a few of the collectives scouring the glut of self-published books in search of gems.
A New Path to Recognition for Self-Published Authors
Tuesday New Release Day: Hallberg, Goldman, Wolitzer, Packer, Butler, Connors, Fey and More
The gorgeous paperback edition of our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s A Field Guide to the North American Family is now out. Also new and noteworthy are Francisco Goldman’s New Yorker excerpted story of the death of his young wife Say Her Name, Meg Wolitzer’s The Uncoupling, Ann Packer’s Swim Back to Me, Blake Butler’s There is No Year, and Phillip Connors’s intriguing debut, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout. Elsewhere, we’ve got Tina Fey’s raved about memoir Bossypants and a new and long in the works biography of Malcolm X, whose author, Manning Marable died just last week on the eve of the book’s publication. Finally, now out in paperback is the fiction blockbuster The Help.
●
●
I Can’t Read
If you’re like this writer, you’ve read enough by now about the scourge of writer’s block. The literature on authors having trouble producing literature is enough to sustain a whole genre by itself. Which is why it’s refreshing to read this article, which tackles another problem: the vexing, peculiar strain of overload known as reader’s block.
A Bookish Jurassic Park
Recommended reading: before you head to the theaters for the latest Jurassic Park film, make sure you know the series’s bookish roots.
●
●
A Slow Death
Gawker.com will end operations next week – and this time it’s for good. Over at the New Yorker, Jia Solentino writes about what made Gawker singular in the online world. “A lively, difficult brand of unevenness was inherent in Gawker’s work, and this still seems to confound people: Why, if it took its work seriously, would it run ‘some of both the best and worst of 21st century journalism,’” as Salon put it, and all under the same name?”
●
●
When Life Gives You Rob Ford, What More Do You Require?
PSA: Little Brother is releasing a special issue entitled Everything Is Fine. The kicker? The issue is dedicated to fiction about embattled Toronto mayor Rob Ford. (P.S. If you aren’t familiar with LB, it’s the magazine run by Millions Tumblr-er emeritus Emily M. Keeler.)