Xzibit would have a field day with this one: an underground bookshop that sells underground books and zines.
I Heard You Like Underground So…
Grocery Shopping with Jess Walter
“I didn’t want to like Jess Walter.” Ann K. Ryles interviews Jess Walter about his new short story collection We Live in Water, fatherhood, poverty, and what he daydreams about while waiting in line at the grocery store at The Rumpus.
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Tuesday is New Release Time
A good week for new releases: John McPhee’s new, more personal collection of essays, Silk Parachute, Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, and, of course, our own Sonya Chung’s debut Long for This World. All three of these books were on our “Most Anticipated” list for 2010. New in paperback today is Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn.
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What Do Vinyl, Heidegger, and E-Books Have in Common?
J-C G. Rauschenberg offers a loose phenomenological look at the persistence of vinyl LPs, and what they might portend for the future of the book.
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English Hangs Over Me
The January issue of Asymptote is out, featuring an excellent interview with Year in Reading alumnus Junot Díaz about language acquisition and diasporic identity. As he puts it, “I live a life where both English and Spanish are in italics in my brain. It costs me no extra effort; it doesn’t feel unusual; it doesn’t feel like an infirmity, but it does strike me every now and then that there are people who don’t pick over their language the way I do, who aren’t so self-conscious of what they’re saying, who have a natural tongue.” Pair with Thea Lim’s Millions essay on race and gender in Díaz’s books.
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Theory of Blog Posts
Over at HTMLGiant, A D Jameson offers summary and analysis of Viktor Shklovsky’s literary theory. The piece then invited some additional words from Helen Stuhr-Rommereim.
Appearing Elsewhere
Our own Bill Morris has a piece in Artes Magazine about a landscape painter, Rackstraw Downes, who is finally “having a long-overdue moment.”
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Tuesday New Release Day: Modiano; Krasznahorkai; Hua; Franklin; Gleick; Springsteen
Out this week: The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano; The Last Wolf & Herman by László Krasznahorkai; Deceit and Other Possibilities by Vanessa Hua; Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin; Time Travel: A History by James Gleick; and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
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Becoming What You Write
Recommended Reading: A conversation between Year in Reading alumna Rebecca Makkai and Louise Erdrich at The Chicago Review of Books. You could also read our interview with Makkai following the release of The Hundred-Year House.
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