HTMLGiant is running a cool series of interviews with readers who recently finished long or difficult books. Check out their takes on Lee Child’s Echo Burning, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and William Gaddis’s The Recognitions over here, here, and here, respectively. Also, while on the topic of difficult books, check out Emily Colette Wilkinson and Garth Risk Hallberg’s round-up of their ten top picks.
Interviews with Ambitious Readers
The Best of the Internet
The Bygone Bureau asked a whole heap of people to write for their annual "Best of the Internet" post, and I was one of them. Come on over to see what I have to say about Ted Berrigan, a Twitter robot, and a certain type of found poetry.
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One Book, Two Covers
"What do these two books have in common?...Open each cover and you will only find similarities: They are the same book." For The Globe and Mail, our own Claire Cameron writes about one book being marketed with two different covers and titles to appeal to different audiences. Pair with: an essay about book covers featuring headless, backless women, and another on the beauty of typewritten book covers.
“Will you accept these abs?”
A new season of The Bachelorette is upon us, and we all know what that means: a whole new batch of Leigh Stein’s Bachelorette poems!
Scientology Revealed
Janet Reitman, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, spent five years researching Inside Scientology, which is reviewed here by Brook Wilensky-Lanford for The San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year, 'Million Dollar Baby'-screenwriter Paul Haggis spoke with Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker about L. Ron Hubbard's religion.
This is my impersonation of a person writing a Curiosity
Comedian Tig Notaro, who recently announced she has breast cancer, has sold her memoir, and fans can look for it on shelves in 2015. Until then, you’ll have to make do with her hysterical stand-up routines.
Tuesday New Release Day: Kang; Moshfegh; Ronsino; Xilonen; Cusk
New this week: Human Acts by Han Kang; Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh; Glaxo by Hernán Ronsino; The Gringo Champion by Aura Xilonen; and Transit by Rachel Cusk. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
For the Sake of Cohesion
“Setting is often the last piece of the jigsaw. I start somewhere else—with a kind of a premise, a set of relationships, a theme—and I often have a long period when I can’t figure out where the story should be put down. I find myself going location hunting. Not just for a time and place, but also for a genre, if you like.” Kazuo Ishiguro on the Hazlitt podcast. For more things Ishiguro, here is our own Lydia Kiesling’s review of Ishiguro’s latest novel, The Buried Giant.
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