Happy Mother’s Day to the maternal Millions readers (and staffers)! Surely none of you rank among the vilest women in fiction, or six of the worst fictional mothers, or even the fifteen most overbearing video game mothers. I’m sure you’re all wonderful.
Happy Mother’s Day!
No Recourse to Steel
It’s safe to say that Jorge Louis Borges could have lectured on anything from watching paint dry to waiting in line at the DMV and the end result would still have been magnificent. Here he is teaching a little Buddhism 101, with an accompanying lecture by his close friend and UC-Berkeley professor Amelia Barili.
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Happy Ministries
Fans of Arundhati Roy are celebrating at the news that the author will publish a new novel, her first in 20 years, reports Electric Literature; The Ministry of Utmost Unhappiness is scheduled for release in 2017. Our own Garth Risk Hallberg maaaaay have poked a bit of fun a few years back at the title of Roy’s first novel, The God of Small Things, but that was all in good fun.
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Tuesday New Release Day: O’Nan; NDiaye; Mogelson; Hipps; Carr
Out this week: City of Secrets by Stewart O’Nan; Ladivine by Marie NDiaye; These Heroic, Happy Dead by Luke Mogelson; The Adventurist by J. Bradford Hipps; and Whosoever Has Let a Minotaur Enter Them by Emily Carr. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Wonders of Wonderbook
This one goes out to all the visual learners out there. Here’s a helpful, illustrated guide to writing scenes and stories with Jeff VanderMeer, author of the bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. Bonus: here’s an interview by VanderMeer with author Richard House from earlier this year.
A Single Sentence
“Sometimes you come across sentences that are like cairns, evidence the trail continues, and you are so grateful to have found them.” For the Tin House blog Jacob Rubin considers one such sentence from Charles D’Ambrosio‘s Loitering, which our own Hannah Gersen reviewed for the Millions.
Drinking with Journalists
At the LARB, Scott Korb interviews Rosie Schaap, who offers up a theory that bars and churches are both a kind of “sanctified space.” To get more insight, you could also check out her Rumpus interview, or even go watch her mix cocktails with Kurt Andersen of NPR. (You could also just go buy her book.)
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