In the LA Times, Jim Ruland reviews Middle C, the new book by Year in Reading alumnus William H. Gass. For another take on the novel, go read “best-read man in America” Michael Dirda in the Washington Post, or else check out Greg Gerke on the author’s Life Sentences.
“The C closest to the center”
Tuesday New Release Day: Elton; French; Michell; Merwin
Out this week: Time and Time Again by Ben Elton; According to Yes by Dawn French; The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell; and What Is a Garden? by W.S. Merwin.
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Time to Grow Up
What’s behind the rise of the new-adult genre of fiction? You could blame the rise of Millennials, but that would be, as Emily Landau argues in a piece for the Canadian magazine The Walrus, too cheap and reductive to really answer the question. Instead, she says that we should look at NA as fundamentally similar to YA, with the main difference being that NA books portrays characters on the cusp of independence. (Related: we polled a group of high school students to find out their favorite YA books of 2013.)
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Saving the Wicked Stepmother
Recommended Listening: “I wanted to rescue the wicked stepmother,” Helen Oyeyemi said in an interview with NPR about her new book, Boy, Snow, Bird (which made our 2014 book preview.)
Poems in Extremity
Recommended reading: Sean Singer reviews Poetry of Witness for The Rumpus and calls for readers to see “poems as ethical and political act[s] in the face of extremity.” Pair with selections from editor Carolyn Forché‘s essay on 20th century poetry of witness.
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I posted a neat interview with Greg Gerke about his experience with William Gass on my podcast, The Virtual Memories Show, if you’d like to check it out: http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/podcast-sound-before-story