Six novelists discuss their second-favorite art forms (after writing, of course). Before you click, see if you can guess which one of these folks is most interested in opera: Kazuo Ishiguro, Lavinia Greenlaw, John Lanchester, Alan Werner, Sarah Hall and Colm Tóibín.
The Other Arts
On designing a Frankenbook
App designer and lit lover Dave Morris blogs about making an interactive app for retelling Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and the differences between video games and interactive reading.
●
●
Delaney Nolan Photographs New Orleans
I’m thinking about installing a Delaney Nolan bat signal to alert the world of her new work whenever it appears. Previously I’ve evangelized about her writing in Guernica, Necessary Fiction, Sundog Lit, and The Rumpus, but this time I’d like to call attention to her photo essay about New Orleans in the latest issue of Oxford American.
Abundance and Awe
Recommended reading: Year in Reading alum Leslie Jamison writes about the pleasures and "democratic awe" of Whitman's Specimen Days. Pair with our own Michael Bourne's "Embracing the Other I Am: or, How Walt Whitman Saved My Life."
●
●
Eye-Candy Gift Books
Boldtype offers up a list of "10 Awesome Books to Give to Your Non-Reading Friends," i.e. eye-candy gift books.
●
●
More dispatches from what will undoubtedly go down in history as the Great Pulitizer Prize For Fiction Brouhaha of 2012:
The Tournament of Books team over at The Morning News have posted an in depth commentary on this year's withheld Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Wall Street Journal asks a handful of book critics to name the books they thought should've won. And over at Moby Lives, Nick Davies has rounded up the statements made by the jury in response to the brouhaha. Lev Grossman, on the other hand, outlines why he's totally okay with the board's decision. And of course, we've got links and excerpts for all the finalists over here.
●
●
Delicate Husk, Inconvenient Hair
Recommended Reading: "So Often the Body Becomes a Distraction" by Kaveh Akbar.
●
●
Flournoy on Ellison
Year in Reading alum Angela Flournoy writes about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for the National Book Foundation. “I return to Invisible Man often because it accomplishes so many things at once, but never at the sake of intelligent, moving storytelling.” Pair with our interview with Flournoy.
●
●