At Slate, our own Mark O’Connell reports back from The Boring Conference, a riveting event that takes place each year in a nondescript hall in East London.
Not to Be Missed
Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Dubus, Freeman, Boyd, Zoller-Seitz
New this week: The Circle by Dave Eggers; Dirty Love by Andre Dubus III; How to Read a Novelist by former Granta editor John Freeman; Solo, a new James Bond novel by William Boyd; and “the first in-depth overview of Wes Anderson’s filmography” by the New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller-Seitz.
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A Light Roast, Please
File this one under "Things I Didn't Know I Needed" -- actor Paul Giamatti playing Honoré de Balzac hopped up on fifty coffees.
“That city in the backseat.”
Recommended Reading: Isle of Youth author Laura van den Berg’s story, “Where Will All the Buildings Go?”
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Borges’ Self-Portrait
Maud Newton posts a self-portrait by Jorge Luis Borges: "When he drew this, because Burt Britton asked him to, Borges was blind."
Quite the Crossover Artist
Before Dr. Seuss penned the Lorax who spoke for the trees, he drew ads for Standard Oil, General Electric, and a host of other large corporations who spoke for a considerably different constituency. This great collection of advertising artwork from Theodore Seuss Geisel courtesy of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego.
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Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness
Who’s the official Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness Officer at your place of work? You mean you don’t have one? Well, get on that promptly. The Center for Disease Control advises that “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack,” so you might as well kill five birds with one stone.
Tuesday New Release Day: DeLillo; Millet; Russo; Morgan; Haslett; Erens
New this week: Zero K by Don DeLillo; Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet; Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo; The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan; Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; and Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens (who we interviewed). For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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