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?
Step Right Up and Meet The Millions!
Tonight! Come out and meet The Millions! Listen to readings from Emily St. John Mandel, Sonya Chung, Michael Bourne, and Garth Risk Hallberg. Also, you can meet our editors C. Max Magee and Ujala Sehgal. Or, if you’re feeling testy, you can debate me in person about my recent eReader article!
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All Wrong
“After years of reading, teaching, and writing about the book, though, I’ve come to believe that… our understanding of what is comic and what is serious in Huck Finn says more about America in the last century than America in the time Twain wrote the book.” Andrew Levy writes for Salon about childhood, race, and “dedicated amnesia” in Mark Twain‘s controversial classic.
Not Dead Yet
Apocalyptic literature is nothing new, but it may, according to Grayson Clary, be entering a new era. In Bookforum, he argues that Benjamin Percy’s The Dead Lands ushers the genre into its mannerist phase. Sample quote: “The Dead Lands is really the stripped, buffed skeleton of a road story, set up to show off—attractively—an enormous quantity of decorating tropes.” You could also read our interview with Percy.
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Dear Sandy, Hello
A look at Ted Berrigan‘s letters to his institutionalized wife, collected in Dear Sandy, Hello, at The Poetry Foundation.
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Tuesday New Release Day: McInerney; McGinniss, Jr.; Lee; Sjón; Vapnyar
New this week: Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney; Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss, Jr.; How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee; Moonstone by Sjón; and Still Here by Lara Vapnyar. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
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