Remember when Little Red Riding Hood was eaten by a hyena? Wait, that’s not the folktale we know. Whether or not Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten depends on where you hear the famous folktale, but anthropologist Jamie Tehrani discovered the origins of the scarlet-hooded girl — Belgium.
The Belgian Big Bad Wolf
Tuesday New Release Day: Cronin, Danielewski, Aira, Jacobson, Bowden
Among this week’s new books we have The Twelve by Justin Cronin (our review), The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski (our interview), The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira by César Aira (our review), and Zoo Time by past Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson. In non-fiction, Mark Bowden has penned an account of the killing of bin Laden.
The Summer People
Over at Longreads, Carrie Frye writes on the homonymous short stories of Shirley Jackson and Year in Reading alumna Kelly Link. Also check out this Millions interview with Link.
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Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is adapting Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale into a ballet.
Nein, nein!
Bad news, guys: the longest word in the German language is officially no longer a word.
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Nabokov Pitches Hitchcock
Remember that time Vladimir Nabokov pitched Alfred Hitchcock a melodramatic love story about a girl and an astronaut? No? Read all about it.
Storytelling Addict
“Storytelling, she added, is a central part of Native American life, and, inevitably an obsessive part of hers. ‘It’s probably the most selfish thing I do,’ she said. ‘Truly. I don’t do it for anyone else. I do it because I have the addict’s need to get lost in the story.’” Louise Erdrich discusses her new novel LaRose.
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New Miranda July Work on the Way
Welcome news for Miranda July fans: she tweeted this week that she’s finished work on her debut novel, The First Bad Man. The book will publish in January 2015.