Today at 3 pm EST, Toni Morrison will be digitally signing copies of her recent novel Home, in celebration of Black History Month. The entire event will be streamed live on Google+.
The Future Is Now
Tuesday New Release Day: Edugyan, D’Agata, Manguso, Ullman, Herbert, Shadid, Baseball
Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is now out in the U.S. Also new this week are John D'Agata's much-discussed Lifespan of a Fact, Sarah Manguso's The Guardians, Ellen Ullman's By Blood and The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert, who has an essay up on our site today. The new memoir by Anthony Shadid has seen its release date pushed up to this week. See our remembrance of Shadid. Finally, it's Christmas for baseball fans: the 2012 Baseball Prospectus is out.
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A person should not be a dud avacado?
At the helm of The Paris Review's advice column this week, Sasha Frere-Jones describes Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be ? as the inverse of Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avacado.
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Adapted for Screen
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Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, Etc.
Back in 1988, Tad Williams published the first book of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, which inspired George R.R. Martin to start writing A Song of Ice and Fire. Now, more than twenty years after publishing the last installment (and just as the new season of Game of Thrones begins), Williams announced that he’s writing a sequel, The Last King of Osten Ard. You could also read our own Janet Potter’s review of the first Game of Thrones book.
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Best So Far
What's the best book of the 21st century? To date, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao seems to be the favorite - the BBC polled a few dozen US critics and Junot Diaz's novel came in first place. The full list is available from The Guardian, and includes Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, both of which appeared alongside Oscar Wao in our own "Best of the Millennium" list a few years ago.
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