Tana French pegs the cause of Ireland’s financial crisis on “a total disconnect between action and consequence.” For many Irish citizens since the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, she writes, “their whole sense of a world governed by coherent cause and effect, of their ability to have any agency in their own lives, came under attack.” Bonus: our own Edan Lepucki has previously written about French’s novels and plotting.
Tana French on the Celtic Tiger
“The worlds of rock and lit appear to be merging”
What do indie rock musicians share in common with experimental writers? A great deal, and not just a distaste for both of those over-used adjectives.
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Bad Feminist, Good Quiche
After the Times Magazine published their interview with Roxane Gay — in which the Bad Feminist author and Year in Reading alum delves into the title of her latest book and talks about her love of Sweet Valley High — the crew at McSweeney’s dug up a humor piece the author published in 2010. If you can read the title without laughing, you are more stoic than I am: “I Am Going to Cook a Quiche in My Easy-Bake Oven and You Are Going to Like It.”
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A Film of Common Prayer
Looks like Joan Didion’s 1977 novel A Book of Common Prayer will now be adapted for the screen.
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Borrow Harry Potter Electronically
Amazon has announced that all seven Harry Potter books will be available via its Kindle Lending Library starting on June 19th.
Lyrical Gifts
John Darnielle, who you may know through his work with The Mountain Goats, released a new novel last week, titled Wolf in White Van. Over at The Hairpin, our onetime #LitBeat editor Emily M. Keeler reviews the book, which she calls “a novel that unspools rather than reads.” Pair with: Jesse Jarnow on the 33 ⅓ book series, which includes a volume written by Darnielle.
Drinking Fitzgerald Under the Table
“Most of us can’t write like our heroes, but nearly every one of us can try to drink like them.” Ian Crouch examines the myth of the great alcoholic writer and Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend in The New Yorker‘s “The Book That Will Make You Never Want to Drink Again.”