Here’s a recording of Colum McCann reading the opening lines of the Amazon Editors’ list of June’s “10 Best Books of the Month”
Definitive Proof that Everything’s Better in an Irish Accent
Updated Advice Classics
Two advice classics, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and Emily Post’s Etiquette, have been updated for the era of Facebook and Google Plus.
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Coming Soon: Beautiful Ruins
Todd Field, who directed In the Bedroom and Little Children, is going to bring Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins to the big screen. The book was a big favorite among this year’s Year In Reading contributors.
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“A secret, writerly sympathy for the hoarder”
Adding to a review by Pamela Erens for The Millions, Zoë Heller reads Janet Malcolm’s Forty One False Starts for the New York Review of Books. Among other things, she concludes that the writer’s job, at least in Malcolm’s estimation, is “to vanquish mess.” (You could also read a review in The Nation I wrote about a few weeks ago.)
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Lit Pics, Part Deux
On Monday, March 11th, Electric Literature and Lazy Fascist Press celebrated the release of Sam Pink’s novel Rontel. (If you need a refresher, I wrote about Rontel a few weeks ago.)
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Chilling out is good for society.
Over in the New Statesmen, Ed Smith makes the case for increasing your productivity by making sure to get your R&R. He mentions Bertrand Russel’s In Praise of Idleness, which is my go to piece for arguing with myself against being too busy to argue with myself. Or would be, if only I could find the time.
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