In the Tank, the blog of the New America Foundation, has a new interview up with Konstantin Kakaes, author of the latest e-book from The Millions. Among other things, he talks about what he would do if he ran NASA — “bring back a piece of Mars” — and mentions that the Voyager spacecrafts will keep sending signals back to Earth until at least the year 2025.
Talking with Konstantin Kakaes
Waterlogged
As you might expect, the literature of England is characterized by a fair amount of rain, but what’s interesting is that the Victorian era had the rainiest literature of all. In The Guardian, a look into the history of downpours and drizzles in English narratives. (via Arts and Letters Daily)
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Amy Tan on Being the First for Some Readers
Nicole Chung interviews Amy Tan about her new memoir Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir, one of the highlights is when Tan ponders being one of the 'first' authors that people name/read when they think of Asian-American literature. "But when ["The Joy Luck Club"] came out, it did feel like there were many expectations from all areas — not just in the Asian American community, but in Asian culture itself, and in any ethnic studies community. There were people who said 'At last!' and there were people who said 'How dare she?' [...] I wanted to say: I’m not writing sociology, it just so happens this is what happened in my own family."
Bukowski’s Rules
Want to write like Charles Bukowski? Just follow these simple rules.
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The Young Library
One downside to being an internationally acclaimed author is that people care an awful lot about digging into your past. Haruki Murakami has found this out the hard way, as a librarian from Kobe High School (which Murakami attended during his younger years) has made public a list of books checked out by then-budding author. For more “Murakami meets library,” here’s a review of his own The Strange Library.
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Talk of the Town
Michael Wolff's palace intrigue book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse has dominated the news cycle this week. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter, publisher Henry Holt and Co. responded by pushing the publication date up four days. Currently #1 on Amazon's Bestseller list, many independent booksellers say they have sold all their copies as well.