Want to wean yourself off gin, recover from tuberculosis, and work on your novel? Don’t go to Asheville, North Carolina. NPR reports that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda spent two tumultuous summers in the town, where Zelda was in a psychiatric hospital and Scott was suicidal. For more on the unhappy life of Zelda, read our review of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.
Vactioning with the Fitzgeralds
Foodiots
Do you find yourself talking, tweeting, or BBM-ing an awful lot about the food you eat or cook? Then according to NY Magazine, you might be a Foodiot.
Another Iraq
"In a just world, every single person who was in favor of invading Iraq would have to read this book. It would be tattooed on the eyes of the invasion's architects, force them to see everything through these writers' words." NPR reviews Iraq + 100: Stories from Another Iraq, a collection in which 10 Iraqi authors imagine their country 100 years into the future. See also our own review of literature about the war.
Dismissed As Coincidence
You'll have to read this Curiosity to believe it! The surprise bestselling Time-Life series was wildly popular in the late 80s–but why? The answer is a bit less mysterious than one might have hoped. As a consolation, here’s a related essay from The Millions on conspiracy literature.
●
●
More Anticipated Books
The eagle-eyed Scott Esposito spots fall publication dates for volumes I and II of Murakami's IQ84...and for Helen DeWitt's new novel (!), Lightning Rods, due out from New Directions.
●
●
One comment:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
“A man who kept to himself”
Recommended reading: one essay on George Orwell's stomping grounds on the Scottish island where he wrote 1984 in the throes of a tubercular fever, and another on the tiny Indian town of Motihari where he was born.
Tuesday New Release Day: Yuknavitch; Keyes; Rich; Pierpont; Hobbs; Johncock; Hall; Taseer; Waclawiak; Mitchell; Markovits; Bai; Keating; Lepucki
Out this week: The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch; The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes; The Hand that Feeds You by A.J. Rich; Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont; Vanishing Games by Roger Hobbs; The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock; Speak by Louisa Hall; The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer; The Invaders by Karolina Waclawiak; Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell; You Don’t Have to Live Like This by Benjamin Markovits; French Concession by Xiao Bai; The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating; and the paperback edition of our own Edan Lepucki's California. For more on these and other new titles, check out our latest book preview.
●
●
Lions, and Tigers, and Fords
Recommended Reading: This essay by Muna Mire and Messiah Rhodes on private policing in Detroit, Michigan. These few Millions essays on the Motor City will satisfy your Detroit fix.
Fantastical Fowl
What’s the deal with all the fake birds animated into fantasy and sci-fi films these days? According to Brian Thill, these digital flocks “aren't just there to make the unreal scenes feel a bit more real” but are rather signifiers of “our oldest and most common metaphor for freedom.” What to make of their ability to evade disaster or succumb to it, however, is another story entirely.
●
●
50 ponies of beer equals approx. 25 pints a day. The man was persistent, that’s for sure.