Maxim’s long, comprehensive oral history of The Wire shouldn’t be missed. In fact, it should be supplemented with Idris Elba’s short profile in New York Magazine.
Hangovers and Strip Clubs: The Wire
The Oracle
John Warner is today reprising his popular book-recommending engine (i.e. his brain), that he unveiled to great effect during the Tournament of Books earlier this year.
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Lipsyte Interviewed
Fiction Daily has added a give and take with The Ask author Sam Lipsyte to its growing collection of author interviews.
A Reader’s Manifesto
This week in book-related comics: "A Reader's Manifesto" by Grant Snider, via Electric Literature.
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Daemon Days
You may have heard (via this site or elsewhere) that Harold Bloom has a new book out. In the Times Sunday Book Review, Cynthia Ozick gives her take, identifying the critic's use of the phrase “without precedent” as key to understanding his theory. You could also read Matt Hanson on Bloom's classic The Anatomy of Influence.
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The New World hits virtual shelves
Chris Adrian's The New World, a digital-platform book we wrote about before, is now on shelves. I mean that idiomatically and not literally -- as none of the editions favored by The Atavist's young publishing arm for this lyrical love story of life after death (interactive ebook app, text-only Kindle/iBook/Google) involve paper.
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Maybe This Is Why They Take So Long to Finish
Robert A. Caro, who releases new installments of his Lyndon B. Johnson biography at a glacial pace, is apparently also working on another project, too. It’s “not a memoir, exactly,” he says, but it does concern “how he came to write the Johnson biography and its predecessor, The Power Broker.”
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A Review in Comics
Book reviews are great and all, but even we sometimes feel they're missing something. Enter Kevin Thomas, whose HORN! illustrated reviews for The Rumpus are beautiful and informative in under 9 panels. Compare his pieces on Roxane Gay's An Untamed State or Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams to our reviews here and here, and be sure to check out the just-published HORN! The Collected Reviews.
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