Amazon is kicking off the year-end deluge of lists with its 100 best books of 2012.
Amazon Releases Its Best 100 Books of 2012
Two Takes on Red Doc>
If you enjoyed the profile of Anne Carson in the latest New York Times Magazine – fictitious “ice bats” notwithstanding – you’re going to really love Parul Sehgal and Nathan Huffstutter’s two takes on Red Doc>. The work, Sehgal writes, is “suspended between what it is and what we want it to be.” And also, writes Huffstutter, it’s a work that “courses with a wit shot through with intelligence and humility.”
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Our Correspondent
As a poet, historian, critic, translator and editor of The New Republic, Malcolm Cowley was a genuine literary polymath, which is why it’s not surprising that he wrote eloquent letters. In one, for example, he described Larry McMurtry, who Cowley taught when McMurtry was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, as a “wild young man from Texas, expert in pornography.” In the Times, Dwight Garner reviews The Long Voyage, a new collection of Cowley’s letters.
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Taking Stock
“I had put manure bags—yes, manure, which is what we could get—at the front and back doors.” Publishers Weekly looks at how Houston-area indie bookstores are faring post-Harvey.
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“The kitchen was the scariest part of all, however!”
Rich Tommaso has penned an illustrated look at the Fantagraphics offices circa 1995.
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A Literary Showman
Our own Nick Ripatrazone writes for The Literary Hub about Don DeLillo’s deep Italian-American roots. Pair with Ripatrazone’s Millions review of DeLillo’s new novel, Zero K.
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Plus He Took a Selfie
We’re not the only ones looking back on favorite pieces of the year. At The Paris Review Daily, a Gchat (yes, Gchat) with George Saunders, who corresponded with Katherine Bernard on Valentine’s Day.
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Fail Music
Novels written by accomplished writers about failed artists are nothing new. What is new is seeing a once-successful novel about a failed artist — one that’s been out-of-print for twenty years — get a burst of renewed attention.
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