As part of their Five Books series, The Browser interviews Colin Thubron, a travel writer from the UK (and author of a recent book on Tibet) who shares his favorite books from the genre.
Wanderlit
The Fallback Plan
Leigh Stein‘s writing has appeared in places such as DIAGRAM, H_NGM_N, and Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010. She also has a weekly column for The Faster Times. Her debut novel, The Fallback Plan, will be released next January by Melville House. Publisher’s Weekly thinks pretty highly of it.
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Literary Curveball
When most baseball players retire, they manage other teams, but Derek Jeter will manage a publishing imprint. The shortstop will open a publishing company, Jeter Publishing, in a partnership with Simon & Schuster. He expects to publish middle-grade fiction, children’s picture books, adult nonfiction, and books for children learning how to read. The first title should hit shelves in 2014. Maybe this could have been a good backup career for The Art of Fielding’s Henry Skrimshander.
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Read Russia 2012
Read Russia 2012 aims to celebrate contemporary Russian literature and book culture, and they’ve scheduled a bunch of events in the NYC area to coincide with next week’s BEA. You should certainly check them out, as well as NYRB Classics’ ongoing coverage of their own Russian literature highlights. (You can get even more information over here, too.)
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How Should An Advice Columnist Be
“What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning.” We’ve come a long way from Dear Abby and Ann Landers, says Megan Marz in an essay for The Point, in which she looks at a younger generation of columnists that includes Cheryl Strayed, Heather Havrilesky, and Kristen Dombek. And speaking of advice! Have you checked out our new writing-advice counselors Swarm and Spark? No? Well then hie yourself to their column already!
Like This Passage?
Ad-driven e-books may be something we’ll all have to deal with in the future. At the Melville House blog, Dustin Kurtz explains why ads that pop up while a person is reading might well be an inevitable development. (If you’re like me, your reaction to this is simple: ugh.)
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What Do Essay Prompts Mean to You?
You may have heard that Tufts University’s latest application forms use the term YOLO in one of their essay prompts. Herewith, a few more essay prompts, courtesy of Stacy Brook at The Hairpin.
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Chabon: Friend to the Geeks
You may not know this, but Michael Chabon co-wrote the script for Disney’s latest blockbuster, Shirtless Martian Tim Riggins John Carter. In an interview with Wired, Chabon defends genre-writing, and also talks about his sci-fi influences.