A release date for D’Angelo’s long-anticipated Voodoo follow-up is due any day now, so I really recommend checking out Amy Wallace’s stellar profile of the artist to stoke your interest.
How Does It Feel / To Wait for a Release Date?
Fantasies of Desires
“(The Great Gatsby) is often considered the greatest American novel of the 20th century—I waver on that sometimes but I love the beauty of its writing, its tabloid immediacy, the high body count, its modernistic touches, the relentless drama put into its novella-length form.” Bret Easton Ellis’s top ten favorite books doesn’t include many surprises, but it’s worth a look.
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Sarah M. Broom on Seeking Out Intellectual Boundlessness
Sarah M. Broom discusses the importance of allowing Black writers — especially women — to write with a sense of boundlessness.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Joukhadar, Celan, and van Heemstra
Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Zeyn Joukhadar, Paul Celan, and Marjolijn van Heemstra—that are publishing this week.
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Paris to the power of 4
Rosecrans Baldwin’s Paris I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down is set in Paris, France. But there are also 25 Parises in the USA. For “Our French Connection,” a series of features for The Morning News, Baldwin hit up four towns called Paris in America and asked locals to opine on the French way of life. You can buy the whole four part series as an epub for $3.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Sweeney; Simonson; Mahajan; Feldman; Barrett; Strong
Out this week: The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney; The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson; The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan; Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman; Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett; and Hold Still by Lynn Steger Strong. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Truly the Best Contest Ever
The New Yorker Book Bench is having a contest. Submit a photo of your pet dressed as a character from literature. My kittens are in for the worst two weeks of their young lives. Dante and Fur-gil? Tess of the O’Paw-bervilles? Jay Catsby?
Oh my god. So many possibilities.
Orwell in Burma
Three weeks ago, Vishwas Gaitonde wrote a piece for us about a house in India once owned by the family of George Orwell. Now, in the Times, Jane Perlez pays a visit to Burma, where Orwell served in the Imperial Police Force and gathered impressions for his first novel, Burmese Days.