“Welcome to another night in the life of Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court justice, current queen of the best-seller list and suddenly the nation’s most high-profile Hispanic figure. She may be a relative newcomer to national life, plucked from circuit-court obscurity less than four years ago. But the release of her new memoir, My Beloved World, suggests that she has broader ambitions than her colleagues, to play a larger and more personal role on the public stage.”
Writ Large
Isaac Asimov Takes on ‘The Bible’
What happens when one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers decides to take on the most widely read book in the world?
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You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him
Is Mark SaFranko the greatest American writer you’ve never heard of? We don’t know, but 3:AM Magazine makes a strong case in this interview with the author who they call an heir to Charles Bukowski and John Fante. Now you’ve heard of him, at least.
The Virtues of Boring
Mark O’Connell’s recent essay in these pages discussed how long, challenging novels can hold you captive (in both the good and bad senses of that phrase). Now, in the Times, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott come to the defense of “the slow and the boring” in film, responding Dan Kois’s Times Magazine piece confessing he’s “suffering from a kind of culture fatigue and have less interest in eating my cultural vegetables.”
Going Home
Recommended Reading: Tyler Malone’s interview with Tom Muir, the site manager of the Thomas Wolfe memorial.
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Photographing Reality
Do author photographs change the way we see them (or the way we read their works)? At Lit Hub, stare into the souls of a few iconic writers and read about how author photos impact us. You could also read our review of Street Seen, which maps out how photography and reality became intertwined.
“Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!”
Elizabeth Bishop’s Brazil. And earlier: Bishop, translation, and the transmutation of loss.
Edan Lepucki Sells California
Congratulations to Millions staffer Edan Lepucki, who sold her debut novel California to Little, Brown at auction this week. The novel, which Edan refers to as “Novel #2” in her article “What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell,” will follow a young married couple grappling with a post-apocalyptic world. Consider us extra relieved given Edan’s proclamation in that article: “And this new book, it will be published. If it doesn’t, well, I’ll just die.”
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