Do you love the city of Miami Beach? Prove it with a poem. At stake is a two night stay at the Catalina Hotel and Beach Club, and the deadline for submissions is December 2nd.
That’s One Way to Get to Miami
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Tuesday New Release Day: Carey; Cusk; July; Gerard; Buwalda; Hawkins; Bender; Goldhagen; Sansal; O’Nan
New this week: Amnesia by Peter Carey; Outline by Rachel Cusk; The First Bad Man by Miranda July; Binary Star by Sarah Gerard; Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda; The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins; Refund by Karen Bender; In Some Other World, Maybe by Shari Goldhagen; Harraga by Boualem Sansal; and West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 First-Half Book Preview.
Bit of a Spinster
In case you feel guilty about the staggering amount of time you spend at home with your pet, just remember: Ernest Hemingway was a cat lady.
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2011 Best of Plagiarism
Q. R. Markham‘s heavily plagiarized book Assassin of Secrets somehow made it onto Kirkus Reviews‘ “2011 Best of Fiction” list. (Saved here in case they take it down.) Interestingly, the link doesn’t appear to lead anywhere. (via)
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Tuesday New Release Day: DeLillo, Tulli, Ozick, Martin
Don DeLillo’s first short story collection, The Angel Esmerelda, is out this week, as is Magdalena Tulli’s genre-defying In Red. New in paperback are Cynthia Ozick’s Foreign Bodies and Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty.
Bow Down
The U.S. Library of Congress has named its newest poet laureate, reports The New York Times. Tracy K. Smith says, “I’m very excited about the opportunity to take what I consider to be the good news of poetry to parts of the country where literary festivals don’t always go. Poetry is something that’s relevant to everyone’s life, whether they’re habitual readers of poetry or not.” Pair with our review of Smith’s memoir Ordinary Light.
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Stephen King Picks Hesh Kestin
As part of World Book Night, a UK event designed to bring attention to books for adult readers, a number of famous authors have chosen books that they would recommend to readers. Stephen King’s selection was Hash Kestin’s small press effort The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats. Published by upstart Dzanc Books in the U.S. in 2009, the jolt of publicity generated by the King selection means the book will now be coming out in the UK as well. Our own Emily Mandel wrote a review of the book in 2010, calling it “a gritty enchantment”
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