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
Tuesday New Release Day: Donoghue; Vásquez; McBride; Raboteau; Olds; Bishop
New this week: The Wonder by Emma Donoghue; Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez; The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride; American Prophets by Albert J. Raboteau; Odes by Sharon Olds; and The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
A destination for writers and scholars
John Updike’s childhood home in Shillington, Pennsylvania is going to become a museum.
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What’s The Rush?
Benjamin Percy makes the case for slowing down, “the best thing [he] ever did for my reading, which might be the best thing [he] ever did for [his] writing.”
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The Audible Antipodal
Asymptote, a new international journal of literary translation, is up for free online and comes packed with ear candy. Though all the content is translated into English, an audio recording of the authors reading their work in the original language accompanies many of the pieces.
Well-Mannered
Apart from being one of America’s most eminent fiction writers, Eudora Welty was also an accomplished photographer, as evidenced by the hundreds of images she produced while employed by the Works Progress Administration in the midst of the Great Depression. As Danny Heitman writes, she was also known as a great public speaker, in part because, as she put it, “I’m always on time, and I don’t get drunk or hole up in a hotel with my lover.” (h/t The Paris Review)
New Zadie
Here’s a book that’s sure to be included in our second-half installment of our Most Anticipated books: Zadie Smith’s NW, which traces the lives of several people who make it out of one of Northwest London’s housing estates. The promotional copy calls it a “delicate, devastating novel of encounters.”
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