Three weeks ago, Vishwas Gaitonde wrote a piece for us about a house in India once owned by the family of George Orwell. Now, in the Times, Jane Perlez pays a visit to Burma, where Orwell served in the Imperial Police Force and gathered impressions for his first novel, Burmese Days.
Orwell in Burma
20 Classic Works of Gay Literature
In honor of the U.S. District Court’s striking down of Proposition 8, Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy lists 20 classic works of gay literature. (via AuthorScoop)
Book Five: Still Strugglin’
Recommended (Long) Reading: This lengthy excerpt from the latest book in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series. In it, Knausgaard is introduced to the literary world and stresses a great deal over his own claims to artistic merit: “Deep down, I was decent and proper, a goody-goody, and, I thought, perhaps that was also why I couldn’t write. I wasn’t wild enough, not artistic enough, in short, much too normal for my writing to take off. What had made me believe anything else? Oh, but this was the life-lie.”
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The Nervous Breakdown
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the new books and culture website The Nervous Breakdown. They’ve already got a great interview with Millions favorite Dan Chaon, as well as some interesting essays that I’m looking forward to digging into. I also like their “self-interview” series–where writers ask, and answer, their own questions.
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Writing Every Day
Do you want to nurture your writing? Sign up for the Skillshare online class Creative Writing for All: 10 Days to a Daily Habit, taught by Friendship author and Year in Reading alumna Emily Gould and featuring a 10-day creative writing challenge. Also: enrollment is free through April 12.
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A Wrinkle in Time to Become a Film
Childhood readers and lovers of A Wrinkle in Time, rejoice! It may finally become a full-length movie, with a screenplay written by Jennifer Lee of Frozen fame.
40 Towns, An Experiment in Literary Journalism
Jeff Sharlet had a challenge for his creative nonfiction students at Dartmouth College. Sensing that journalism had become too “dull,” too mired in a “culture of professionalism” divided “between reporting and ‘storytelling,’” Sharlet asked his students who didn’t “know [any] better” to create a magazine of their own. The result, 40 Towns, embraces “the right conditions” of literary creation – immersion, journalism, regionalism and “a term of revision” – to present a “collection of documents, artifacts of real life” about the Upper Valley.
Robinson, Lila and NPR
Recommended listening: Marilynne Robinson talks with NPR about about her latest novel, Lila, which we covered in our “Great Second-Half 2014 Book Preview” and which Leslie Jamison recently reviewed for The Atlantic.