“Bengali children’s fiction’s limitless supply of ghost stories is matched by little other than its readers’ appetite for it,” writes Siddharthya Swapan Roy. “Anthologies dedicated to ghostly thrills come out with unfailing regularity and every publishing house that does not wish to upset its child readership pays due respects to ghosts and their stories.”
Boo-gali
Tuesday New Release Day: Morrison; Schultz; Roe; Wellington; Cohen; Parrett; Miller; Gibbon
New this week: God Help the Child by Toni Morrison; The Blondes by Emily Schultz; The Miracle Girl by Andrew Roe; Positive by David Wellington; This Is How It Really Sounds by Stuart Archer Cohen; When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett; Seven Devils by M.G. Miller; and Paris Red by Maureen Gibbon. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
Robert McCrum on books
Would you rather have a long literary career, or write a brilliant, successful one-off? Robert McCrum considers the literary career arc.
●
●
Print Culture
“At its core, the New York newspaper strike was a battle over technology. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of computerized typesetting systems that would revolutionize the newspaper composing room…Today, new technology is again shaking American newspapers as the Internet drains away more and more advertising revenue. Cities with dailies may soon face a newspaper blackout much darker than what New York experienced a half-century ago. For a brief period, New York was a laboratory that demonstrated what can happen when newspapers vanish,” writes Scott Sherman at Vanity Fair.
They Really Get Me
For an invigorating jolt of proletarian/genetic bitterness, The New York Times has a “New Victorian” fashion slide show, featuring a selection of gentlemen with admirable bone structure, all in thousand-dollar cutaway coats and plaids and things.
●
●
Tuesday New Release Day: Adler; Smith; Harris; Margolin; Hall; Mailer; Saramago
Out this week: The Wall by H.G. Adler; How to Be Both by Ali Smith; Screenplay by MacDonald Harris; Woman with a Gun by Phillip Margolin; Essays after Eighty by Donald Hall; Selected Letters by Norman Mailer; and Skylight by the late Nobel laureate José Saramago. For more on these and other recent titles, check out our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
●
●
A Cure for Writer’s Block
“Don’t discount the two greatest cures for [writer’s] Block: plagiarism and suicide.” Joshua Cohen dispenses some curious advice to writers at Ask the Paris Review.
●
●