In the latest installment of #LitBeat our intrepid reporter Tiffany Gibert finds herself celebrating The Common and transfixed by The Dog House Band.
#LitBeat: The Common Launch
A Borrowing Boom
“Between 1990 and 2014, visits to public libraries grew by a whopping 181%. For context, the population of the United States increased by 28% during that period.” Why the library boom? (via The Digital Reader) See also this paean by Daniel Penev in our own pages,“The Library Is Dead. Long Live the Library!”
Rule No. 8: Is secret.
Colson Whitehead offers eleven simple writing rules. Also check out our review of Whitehead’s most recent novel, Zone One.
Rosenbaum on Nabokov’s Laura
Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum talks with Brooke Gladstone of NPRs On the Media about posthumous publishing, specifically Nabokov, but also Kafka and in general.
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Oh Boris
At the LRB, Jonathan Coe reviews The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson, a book that delves into the satirical gold mine that is the Mayor of London.
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An American Point of View
The international popularity and utility of English doesn’t show any signs of slowing, but what will the language look like after a few generations of increasing usage? The Economist gives a brief answer, but it doesn’t address the ways English is or will be used by different people to tell their stories. Damian Fowler addresses this when he asks, “[W]hat does it mean to have an American point of view,” or to call a book American in tone, as opposed to British or just English-language? In a blog post for The Paris Review, Fowler offers an answer: American novels are characterized by “a spare, sure sense of narrative, reflected in a colloquial voice, free of affectation.”