Let’s all take a momentary break from literary coverage so we can watch a wedding proposal so sweet and wonderful, it’ll make you totally forget how much you hate its accompanying song.
The Power of Awwwws
Tuesday New Release Day: Ferris; Khakpour; Fierro; Hemmings; Mosley; Boyden; Melnik; Ma; Johnston
Year in Reading alum Joshua Ferris has a new book on shelves this week, as does Millions contributor Porochista Khakpour. Also out: Cutting Teeth by Julia Fierro; The Possibilities by Kaui Hart Hemmings; Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore by Walter Mosley; The Orenda by Joseph Boyden; Snow in May by Kseniya Melnik; The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma; and Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2014 Book Preview.
Recession, Eh? Not Up Here
The oil boom occurring in North Dakota, Montana, and Canada’s Bakken Formation is so frantic right now that ND’s unemployment rate is only 3.4%, the lowest in the nation. “Hiring is so frantic,” writes Business Week‘s Bryan Gruley, “the McDonald’s in Dickinson [North Dakota] is offering $300 signing bonuses.”
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern‘s debut novel The Night Circus gets the NPR treatment. She’s totally appreciative.
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Believe Me
There’s a certain narrative voice with an unspoken aim to exonerate the speaker from wrongdoing. It occurs in novels, though it’s most common in monologues, especially those which take up the entirety of a play. At Bookforum, Lurid and Cute author Adam Thirlwell lists a number of examples, including Hunger by Knut Hamsun and Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein.
Lingua Donna
In honor of Women in Translation month, The Guardian asks 10 female translators and writers about the work that inspires them, with answers ranging from Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck to Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth, which we reviewed when it came out in the States. Pair with this survey of the work of Argentine writer Leila Guerriero.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Capote; Mitchell; Maguire; Rendell; Schumacher; Dunn; Strayed
Out this week: The Early Stories of Truman Capote; Slade House by David Mitchell; After Alice by Gregory Maguire; Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell; The British Lion by Tony Schumacher; We Five by Mark Dunn; and a book of quotations by Cheryl Strayed. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.