The Common has a newly translated chapter of Turki al-Hamad’s novel Al Karadib. Its publication online coincides with the one-year anniversary of al-Hamad’s arrest in December 2012 for “tweets considered apostasy.” This featured chapter is the first part of the book to be translated into English.
“I just like reading, sir—nothing more.”
The Starship Lands
Sarah Blake has completed her twelve-part illustrated epic poem, The Starship, at Berfrois. Pair with our essay on why Americans read poetry but won’t buy poetry books.
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Internet Erasure
“There is a wide range of art in the world, but there is an urgent need for art that pushes us and makes us uncomfortable because it forces us to think, to question, to give into it, to resist.” Year in Reading alum Roxane Gay writes on Internet censorship and Dennis Cooper’s now deleted blog.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Bock; White; Rogan; O’Connor; Tempest
Out this week: Alice & Oliver by Charles Bock; Our Young Man by Edmund White; Now and Again by Charlotte Rogan; Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings by Stephen O’Connor; and The Bricks That Built the Houses by Kate Tempest. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great 2016 Book Preview.
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Weekend Links
The Oscar Blog: Ed has recruited Scott, YPTR, Elizabeth Crane, Jeff, Gwenda, Mark and several others to "live blog" the Oscars on Sunday. I'm convinced that no good can come of this... but you can bet I'll be reading along.I'll read what ever Malcolm Gladwell writes, but his 2-part conversation with ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons on sports (and many other topics) is particularly entertaining.I'm a huge fan of the Comics Curmudgeon blog, which hilariously skewers the newspaper funnies. Now Josh has hit the big time. He'll be skewering political cartoons for Wonkette.The winners of the 2005 Book Critics Cirle Award will be announced tonight. Here are the finalists.Brokeback Mountain (video link) in Bun-O-Vision.
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Melville House’s Hybrid Books
Emily Witt checks out Melville House's new Hybrid Books for The New York Observer. The publisher says they are “an innovative publishing program that gives print books the features of enhanced eBooks.”
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“Norman was the very antithesis of minimalism”
Apart from calling up visions of a Carver-Mailer axis of literary minimalism, these remarks by Joyce Carol Oates upon winning the Mailer Prize convince us that Mailer had quite the unflappable ego.
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New Directions’ Birthday Bash
On a more optimistic note, New Directions, New York City's inestimable and long struggling (but "long dazzling!") publishing house, will be throwing itself a 75th birthday party on Thursday, October 27. (They just redesigned their website and colophon, too.)