Eminem as an essayist. What Usher is reading.
Hip-Hop Men of Letters
Brooklyn Boys I
His new novel, Sunset Park, finds Paul Auster leaving behind the metafictional gamesmanship of his recent work for a look at our new Age of Austerity. This week, he talks to The L Magazine about the neighborhood from which it takes its title and inspiration...
Do You Eat Pork?
And now, a little bit about a world you might be totally unfamiliar with; this piece from The Rumpus is a fascinating, in-depth look at identity politics and eating pork in the Chinese borderlands. Bonus: a complementary piece about what it’s like to be a Chinese-American writer living in china.
Reading for the Worse
Leslie Jamison and Francine Prose discuss the ways reading can affect your life for the worse, with potential results ranging from murder to being bad at sports.
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Most Epic
This week in book-related infographics: an "Obsessively Detailed Map of American Literature's Most Epic Road Trips."
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Poetry!
At the recently re-launched Poems Out Loud site, you can see Stanley Kunitz talk about Gerard Manley Hopkins, and hear contemporary poets like Kim Addonizio read their own work.
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R.O.U.S.
Meet the Bosavi woolly rat, a new breed of giant rat recently discovered in the forests of Papua New Guinea. Weighing in at over three pounds and measuring more than three feet long, it's thought to be the largest known species of rat on the planet.
Tuesday New Release Day: Lee; Jiles; McCarthy
New this week: The Boy Who Escaped Paradise by J.M. Lee; News of the World by Paulette Jiles; and The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy. For more on these and other new titles, go read our latest fiction and nonfiction book previews.
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Photosynthesis?
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