China plans to spend millions “sprucing up” Gaomi, the hometown of recent Nobel winner Mo Yan.
Making It
Justin Cronin on Writing “The Passage”
The Passage author Justin Cronin answers questions for Salon’s Reading Club: “For many years … I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.”
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“Well most people don’t go to the Olympics!”
Millions alumna Rachel Hurn had the honor of interviewing Swimming Studies author Leanne Sharpton for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
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The History of the Blurb
What if Petrarch had blurbed The Divine Comedy, or Shakespeare, “author of Tony Award-winning sensation Hamlet,” had reviewed Don Quixote? Tom Rachman imagines these blurbs and more for The Rumpus, and his piece pairs well with our brief history of the blurb.
The Truth Is Here
Here’s a piece of news you likely didn’t see coming: David Duchovny has published a novel. Titled Holy Cow, it deals, in the words of interviewer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, with “a traumatized cow, a sassy turkey and a pig converting to Judaism.” She talks with the X-Files star in this week’s Times Magazine.
Tuesday New Release Day
Julia Child fans may enjoy a new collection of her correspondence with her friend and “unofficial literary agent” Avis DeVoto. The letters follow Child through her life overseas. Also out now is a snazzy new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray with a cover illustrated by Ruben Toledo.
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The Dangerous Women of Westeros
George R. R. Martin’s publisher shared an excerpt from the author’s story, “The Princess and The Queen, or, The Blacks and The Greens.” The piece serves as a “Westerosi history lesson on the Targaryen Civil War,” and covers “the Causes, Origins, Battles, and Betrayals of that Most Tragic Bloodletting Known as the Dance of the Dragons.” It will be bundled along with 20 other stories in the forthcoming Dangerous Women collection. The question remains, however: what kind of recipes does it feature?