World Book Night is scheduled for this Tuesday, and 25,000 volunteers will gather to distribute free books to “light and non-readers across America.” Last year, our own Edan Lepucki participated in the event and wrote about it for our site. However this year, if you’d like to participate on your own, you can enter the organization’s book giveaway to receive “5 free WBN editions to share with others.” Get out there and spread some literary love.
World Book Night’s Book Giveaway
Kerouac Returns to the Big Screen
This November, moviegoers can catch an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur (trailer here). Do you think it looks better than last year’s cinematic version of On the Road (trailer here)?
Reading E-Readers
The publishing industry is changing quickly, and Jellybooks is helping it happen. The company gives out free e-books to readers in exchange for their consent to track their reading habits. This data goes back to publishers to be used in the market. Our own Nick Moran asks if e-readers are as green as we think.
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Sturm und Drang
“For Germany, the Wagners are what the Atreidai are in Greek mythology. One of them, Atreus, committed a grave sin, casting a curse over all subsequent generations, beginning with Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed by Iphigenia, Orestes and Electra. The family is marked by enmity, as is the Wagner family.” On a certain influential composer.
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A New Native American Epic
There There by Tommy Orange is one of our most anticipated books of the year. It debuts next week and this week Orange receives the New York Times treatment along with a few other rising star indigenous writers in an excellent profile. "Mr. Orange is part of a new generation of acclaimed indigenous writers from the United States and Canada who are publishing groundbreaking, formally innovative poetry, fiction and prose, shattering old tropes and stereotypes about Native American literature, experience and identity. Their ranks include poets like Layli Long Soldier, Natalie Diaz, Joshua Whitehead and Tommy Pico, and the essayists and memoirists Elissa Washuta and Terese Marie Mailhot.
Not Very Titillating
Those of you who know the joy of reading romance novels with your friends have probably wondered at some point what people who write erotica are like. Are they bankers and professionals? Housewives and mistresses? Are they some combination of all of the above? At Slate, a chaste look at the lives of unchaste writers.
Robert Gardner and Peter Matthiessen in Conversation
The New York Times unearthed footage from a 1996 interview with Robert Gardner and Peter Matthiessen. The pair discuss a trip they took to New Guinea in the 60s, which “resulted in Gardner’s film Dead Birds and Matthiessen’s book Under the Mountain Wall.”