How to build and organize a digital library? Here’s one way to do it.
This Round Goes to eBooks
The Latest from Canada
Need some more Canadian literature in your life? The Walrus asked several authors to pick their favorite books of the year. Among their selections are The Betrayers, a novel by Year in Reading alum David Bezmozgis, and Wallflowers, the recent collection of stories by Eliza Robertson. Pair with: Andrew Saikali on Canadian novellas.
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New Wave of Confessions
For The Guardian, Rafia Zakaria writes on the new wave of confessional “feminist” memoirs. As she puts it, “We’re on an uncomfortable tightrope between a bold new dialogue about women and sex, and the monetisation of that conversation by powers that recognise that as a gap in the market.” Pair with this Millions essay on feminist pop anthems.
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Greatly Exaggerated
At 74, Clive James is a remarkably prolific poet, one who’s working hard to finish or publish three books in the next year alone. He spoke with Douglas Murray of The Spectator about his unflagging energy. “At the moment, I am in the slightly embarrassing position where I write poems saying I am about to die and I don’t,” he says. You could also read our own Garth Risk Hallberg on James’s book Cultural Amnesia.
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The case against writing manuals
In The Atlantic, Richard Bausch makes a case against writing manuals: "The trouble of course is that a good book is not something you can put together like a model airplane."
Should’ve Read The Lease
“On the day I moved in, without giving it any thought, we started to refer to one storage space—there are three, two low-ceilinged ones on either side of the pitch-roofed room and one closet—as ‘the bad area.’ We had barely walked in, we (at least I) had forgotten the ghost, and here we were—‘the bad area.’” Amie Barrodale writes at The Paris Review Daily about life in a haunted apartment.
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A Literary Wake
In Austin, the Harry Ransom Center and American Short Fiction are hosting a tribute event for J.D. Salinger that will include readings by Elizabeth Crane, Nick Flynn, Amelia Gray, Elizabeth McCracken, ZZ Packer, and John Pipkin.
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PW Reviews Late American Novel and More
The book I co-edited, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, got its Publishers Weekly review this week - a very nice writeup. Also spotted this week, a longer consideration of the book at tumblr Feriatus.