New this week: Clive James’s translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Edward O. Wilson’s Letters to a Young Scientist, Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley, and The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite.
Tuesday New Release Day: Dante, Wilson, Riley, Waite
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern‘s debut novel The Night Circus gets the NPR treatment. She’s totally appreciative.
We’re Gonna Make It
Recommended Reading: A chapter of Janice Shapiro’s new graphic memoir Crushable, on the subject of the late Mary Tyler Moore.
Last of the Mohicans, First of the Republicans
At Salon, Andrew O’Hehir dubs Lincoln “a tremendous accomplishment.” (It probably doesn’t hurt that its director is Steven Spielberg.)
Notes from the Melbourne Writers Festival
“If DBC Pierre wasn’t twelve scotches into a bender before he went on stage, I have lost a substantial wager.” Notes from the Melbourne Writers Festival, at the Electric Literature blog.
Goodies from The New Yorker
In this week’s New Yorker, James Wood critiques Paul Auster, while his sometime-subject Don DeLillo offers refreshingly offbeat short fiction.
Bridget Jones and the Misprint
You’d expect excessive swearing, smoking, and sex in a Bridget Jones novel, but a few copies of Mad About the Boy have accidentally included 40 pages of English actor’s David Jason’s memoir, My Life. Publisher Penguin Random House has admitted to the hilariously postmodern mistake. To find out what’s really in the book, read an excerpt at NPR.