Cher and Cher Alike
Orlando
"I have often thought that if I were ever a drag queen, and more specifically that if I were ever a drag queen who was a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I would play Virginia Woolf — or rather, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf — in the Snatch Game episode when the contestants don their very best celebrity impersonation." Untucking RuPaul's Drag Race at The Los Angeles Review of Books.
P.D. James Passes Away
Author P.D. James, "the Queen of crime writing" and subject of one of our Post-4o Bloomers essays, has passed away, reports the BBC.
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Not the Same
Few things are more individual than your feelings about e-books. Dustin Illingworth can’t stand them -- as he puts it, “books are meant to be handled and smelled.” At Full-Stop, he writes about what this preference reveals about himself. You could also read our tribute to e-book pioneer Michael Hart.
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Pioneering
Recommended Reading: Ruth Graham on the uncensored memoirs of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
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“Reflections on Gandhi”
Looks like George Orwell's birthplace is going to be turned into a memorial - but to a different writer and activist. The land will be dedicated to Gandhi, who Orwell wrote about in his 1949 essay "Reflections on Gandhi."
On Death and Crows
Max Porter's Death Is the Thing With Feathers is a bizarre, beautiful book. Over at The Literary Hub, he talks death, writing, and musical theater with Catherine Lacey. Porter's book came highly recommended by Garth Risk Hallberg in his 2015 Year in Reading for The Millions.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Adrian, Prose, Doyle, Boyd, Grant
It's a big week for literary new releases. Chris Adrian's much anticipated new novel The Great Night is now out, as is Francine Prose's My New American Life. Also new this week are Roddy Doyle's latest collection of stories, Bullfighting, and the reissue of William Boyd's impish prank of a book, Nat Tate: An American Artist. Finally, past Booker shortlister Linda Grant has a new novel out called We Had It So Good.