Sarah Fay, associate editor of The Paris Review, has a piece in The Atlantic on the digitization of book reviewing, framed beautifully by references to George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer.” She praises Bookslut, Nancy Pearl, Goodreads, and The Los Angeles Review of Books for their collective skills of recommendation, reviewing, and New Criticism. I’d add The Quarterly Conversation, The Rumpus, The New Inquiry, The Morning News (for their annual Tournament of Books feature), and of course, The Millions.
Could the internet save book reviews?
Reading Through Trauma
“My whole life, I had used stories, both my own and other people’s, to check out of grocery store lines and long bus trips, stints in doctors’ waiting rooms, heartache, my own depression, and finally of the tedious exhaustion of new motherhood. Now, here I was in this 15-by-20 room, where monitors and alarms were constantly beeping, and there was no way out, except the unimaginable.” Alyson Foster, author of Heart Attack Watch, writes about her son’s illness and her love of reading.
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#1000BlackGirlBooks
If you haven’t heard about Marley Dias, you have now. She has launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks book drive to collect one thousand books with black girls as the protagonists, which will be donated to a library in St. Mary, Jamaica. Did I mention that she’s eleven years old?
Falling in Love with Language
“When I heard Afro-Brazilian people speak Portuguese, first in films like City of God and Bus 174, and then live and direct in Bahia, I fell hard for the ease, lyricism, and lilt in their voices which reminded me of the Anglophone Caribbean family and community I grew up in.” Over at Words Without Borders, Naomi Jackson reflects on blackness in Brazil.
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Christian Grey: Coming to a Theatre Near You
The theatrical trailer for the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey was released this week. If you’re keeping track, that means we’ve now got a film based on fan fiction written about another film adapted from a schlocky romance novel involving vampires. (Come at me, Twilight fans.)
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A Voice of One’s Own
“Life is weird and dumb and restrictive, but a poem can be whatever the hell you want it to be for god’s sake. Other people will always have opinions, they’re just really none of my business.” In an interview at the Lit Hub, Tommy Pico talks about poetry and his creative process.
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Still Fighting It
The “Albums of Our Lives” series from The Rumpus has produced a couple gems. In this newest edition to the series, Andrea Laurion takes on the Ben Folds classic Rockin’ the Suburbs.
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The Conch Republic Seeks Literary Job Applicants
A true genius is someone who’s talented and accomplished enough to work in the publishing/literary crucible of New York City, but who’s also smart enough to know that working in New York City is nothing compared to working in Key West, Florida. That’s right: the Key West Literary Seminar is hiring.
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