You can treat yourself to The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg for the low price of $2.99. As readers of the book will find out: it’s hard to resist treats…
The Middlesteins On a Budget
Theo Decker’s Pinterest
Keeping track of the art mentioned in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is almost as difficult as keeping track of Boris. Fortunately, Laura Petelle made a Pinterest board of all the art in the novel, complete with excerpts. Start reading from the bottom up, and beware of spoilers.
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Hot Authors
“Author-hot” has historically been a pejorative phrase, or at best faint praise, but Canteen is looking to change that with its “Hot Authors” project, “reinterpreting and reappropriating fashion magazine glam” for the Moleskine set. The redesigned Canteen website also features an interview with yours truly – not, I’m sad to report, included in the “Hot Authors” package.
Look Who’s Talking Knau
“I could not do anything but wiggle, so I wiggled.” Here’s a fake excerpt from the non-existent seventh book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, helpfully titled Look Who’s Talking Knau.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Tartt, Lamb, Collins, Pierpont, Buck
Out this week: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (who Angela Qian wrote about for The Millions in September); We Are Water by Wally Lamb; Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins; Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books by Claudia Roth Pierpont; and The Eternal Wonder, a recently discovered novel by Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck. For more on these and other new books, check out our Great Second-half 2013 Book Preview.
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Nouveau Riche
“When Michael reads in one of the society columns that are hilariously reprinted here, misspellings and all, that Astrid’s jewels aren’t blingy enough, he flies into a fury of inadequacy. This leads him to try to buy one of Singapore’s rarest architectural masterpieces and turn its ground floor into a museum for his car collection, which includes a car from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; fortunately, his offer is turned down.” On Kevin Kwan’s China Rich Girlfriend.
Fetishized Frocks
“When she was at Radcliffe, Gertrude Stein always wore black and refused to wear a corset. Samuel Beckett liked Wallabee boots and Aran sweaters and settled on his hairstyle when he was 17.” Proving that author worship is still alive and well, The New York Times reviews a new book called Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore. Come for Mark Twain‘s white suit; stay for Zadie Smith‘s head wraps. Semi-related: how clothing makes the (fictional) woman and man.
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Book World
“These days…the brick-and-mortar bookstores that are still standing have a loyal following.”
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