New releases this week include The Signature of All Things by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert, which you can learn more about in Steve Almond’s review for the Times. Also out: The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna; The Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble; Half the Kingdom by Lore Segal; The Night Guest by Fiona MacFarlane; The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson; Personae by Hall of Famer Sergio de la Pava; and The Karl Kraus Project by Jonathan Franzen.
Tuesday New Release Day: Gilbert, Forna, Drabble, Segal, MacFarlane, Winterson, de la Pava, Franzen
Tuesday New Release Day: Oyeyemi; Leyner; Spiotta; Lee; Parker; Greenridge; Baume; Tsabari
Out this week: What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi; Gone with the Mind by Mark Leyner; Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta; High Dive by Jonathan Lee; Crazy Blood by T. Jefferson Parker; We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenridge; Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume; and The Best Place on Earth by Ayelet Tsabari. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
Cyberpunk/Cyberspace
“I can’t remember another single work of art ever having had that immediate and powerful an impact, which of course makes the experience quite impossible to describe. As I experienced it, it drove me out of my wretched mind … I do know that I knew immediately that my sense of what science fiction could be had been permanently altered.” William Gibson on having his world rocked (and artistic sensibilities altered) by Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Moore; Li; Wilson; Stace; Harbach
Lorrie Moore, who we profiled yesterday, has a new story collection on shelves this week. Also out: Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li; What’s Important is Feeling by Adam Wilson; Wonderkid by Wesley Stace; and MFA vs. NYC, a new essay collection (spun off from an n+1 piece) edited by Chad Harbach.
We Dare You
“The Dares. We’d been at them all summer: making each other do stuff, alone or together, just for the fun of it. Girls like us, with high GPAs and not a single boy looking our way, needed a little danger to get us through the summer.” Our own Edan Lepucki has a short story, “Ambulance of Boys,” on Storychord.com.
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Dispatch from Kolkata
Over at Electric Literature, Megha Majumdar writes about the changing architecture in Kolkata, the quest for authenticity, and nostalgia. Pair with Olena Jennings’s Millions essay on nostalgia for a life never lived.
LDS Superstar: Parker & Stone’s The Book of Mormon
Some Mormons are excited about the recent news of Trey Parker and Matt Stone‘s forthcoming musical, The Book of Mormon: “How can they call us a cult once we’re headlining 52nd Street? The Jews got ‘Fiddler.’ The Catholics got ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Doubt.’ It’s our time to shine.” Read more at the Salt Lake Tribune.