Out this week: Death of the Black-Haired Girl by Robert Stone; Hild by Nicola Griffith; A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks; The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig; and A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor. For more on these and other new releases, go read our Great Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
Tuesday New Release Day: Stone, Griffith, Banks, Zweig, O’Connor
Pale Fire
You can't write about Robert Lowell without writing about mental illness -- the poet went through many stretches of mania and psychosis in his life. In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda reads a "medico-biography" of Lowell, which takes a full measure of his lifelong illness and its consequences.
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Playing Ball
In the early days of sportswriting, journalists weren’t necessarily focused on soccer, football or even baseball. In the forties, boxing and horse racing were still important beats, and they gave W.C. Heinz the opportunity to build his legacy. In the Times, a review of The Top of His Game, a new collection of the reporter’s sportswriting. You could also read Sebastian Stockman on the problem with sportswriting as a genre.
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Best Translated Book 2010
The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven and translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu has won the 2010 Best Translated Book Award. Previously: The shortlist.
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Franzen the Fanboy
Every week, we read another article about what Jonathan Franzen hates, but in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Franzen discussed his favorite books. He's a fan of Harriet the Spy, Gone with the Wind, Childhood’s End, and The Trial.
Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam
If you missed the worldwide celebration of Irish literary greats on St. Patrick’s Day, you can make up for it with these podcasts of classic Irish writers at The Guardian.
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There’s always funny in the banana stand.
Rolling Stone asked David Cross about Arrested Development's Netflix relaunch and he says it's "audacious and amazing."
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“The equal of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev”
Recommended Reading: Eileen Battersby on a new translation of the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov.
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Songs of Experience
More on Maurice Sendak's last book, My Brother's Book, and the influence of William Blake.
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