Mike Sonksen takes a look at both Tinfish and Bamboo Ridge Press, as well as a handful of influential Hawaiian writers, as he investigates “Maui, Pacific Literature, and the Aloha Spirit.”
The Epicenter of Pacific Literature
#1000BlackGirlBooks
If you haven’t heard about Marley Dias, you have now. She has launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks book drive to collect one thousand books with black girls as the protagonists, which will be donated to a library in St. Mary, Jamaica. Did I mention that she’s eleven years old?
The Unbearable Finitude of Reading
Beginning with the same premise—one can only read so many books in a given lifetime—two authors write very different articles: Maria Bustillos lists the recommendations of George Orwell, Henry Miller, and John Waters that she’s followed in an effort to maximize her short reading life. Marc Wortman wonders if authors are being paid by the page and, given our short lives, whether we should even bother with the behemoth volumes coming out recently.
Not to be Rude
Apologies for bringing this up, but in a WaPo review of Sorry!: The English and their Manners, Jonathan Yardley points out that your average English person says “sorry” eight times a day.
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“The dream of authenticity”
A few weeks ago, Meghan Daum released an essay collection, The Unspeakable, which our own Hannah Gersen described as “unputdownable” in her Millions review. At Slate, Katy Waldman offers her own praise, writing that “these essays do what essays often set out to do: trace the outlines of a self.”