The new book by Alain de Botton, How to Think More About Sex, addresses exactly what you’d think it would based on a glance at its title. According to de Botton, the word “sexy,” at base, refers to people or things which mimic our deeply-held values. At Brain Pickings, you can read more excerpts.
A Titillating Read
Warm Ups
As you might have heard, the tenth annual Morning News Tournament of Books will commence this Thursday, and to kick things off, the site held a pre-Tournament playoff round. In it, Lev Grossman and David Gutowski (aka Largehearted Boy) try to predict what Geraldine Brooks will choose as her novel of the year. (Our own Lydia Kiesling takes part on the 18th.)
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Hodgman on the Apocalypse
Humorist, author, and sometime PC representative John Hodgman is interviewed for The A.V. Club. Among the discussion points? Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road.
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Go Cardinals?
How’s your NCAA bracket doing? Busted? Well, maybe you should’ve picked your teams based on which ones turn the highest profit. The Atlantic analyzed the financial data and, voilà, their bracket correctly predicted nine of the teams in the Sweet Sixteen.
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New Maeve Binchy Coming Up
When Maeve Binchy passed away two years ago, she left behind a novel, A Week in Winter, that appeared to cap off an accomplished 40-year career. It turns out her fans have more posthumous work to look forward to: a new 400-page story collection, Chestnut Street, that comes out on April 24th.
Is there a rising star among you?
The Ashmead Award is presently accepting nominations, so if you know an exceptional young editor it may be time to break out the letterhead.
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Tuesday New Release Day
New releases this week: All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang, “a writing-school success story” according to the New York Times in its review, Obama’s Wars, the latest book by legendary reporter Bob Woodward, Listen to This, a collection of essays published by music critic Alex Ross during his 12-year career at The New Yorker, and (almost new) is David Grossman’s To the End of the Land, as reviewed by Rayyan Al-Shawaf for The Millions.
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American Gaze
“What does it look like to be the child of war? A product of war? What does it look like to be a queer child from a very traditional Confucian family? How does one feel to pay homage to a family but to also, in a way, betray those familial values?” Kaveh Akbar interviews Ocean Vuong about linguistic identity, syntax, and the American gaze for Divedapper.
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