At Salon, an interview with Year in Reading alum Gary Shteyngart, whose new memoir, Little Failure, came out last week. Shteyngart talks about the rise of a new “global fiction” and laments the fact that Russia “can’t seem to catch a break.”
“Trying to save Brooklyn”
A Laugh for the Jobseeker
At McSweeney’s: “A GREAT JOB OPPORTUNITY!” (Funnier/sadder if you’re jobless right now.)
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#1000BlackGirlBooks
If you haven’t heard about Marley Dias, you have now. She has launched the #1000BlackGirlBooks book drive to collect one thousand books with black girls as the protagonists, which will be donated to a library in St. Mary, Jamaica. Did I mention that she’s eleven years old?
Pirates Write Books Too
Actor Mackenzie Crook (think tall, gangly pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean) tells Telegraph WordUp! Festival that writing his first children’s book, The Windvale Sprites, was the most nerve-wracking test of his career.
Celebs to Read to You
Audible is bringing out the big guns for its new A-List collection, a series of audio books read by celebs, including Samuel L. Jackson narrating A Rage in Harlem and Anne Hathaway doing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Raining Granduer
This year is all about #readwomen2014 and #weneeddiversebooks. Faint Promise of Rain, the debut novel from Anjali Mittar Duva, satisfies all these criteria. The book is just out from SheWrites press and is set in the turbulent, caste-driven setting of the Mughal empire. Read an excerpt over at Bloom.
Dispatch from Wisconsin
Lorrie Moore writes about her home state of Wisconsin and its popular Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. Also check out the Millions profile of Moore.
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NBCC Award Winners Announced
The National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced last night, and the winners might be familiar to Millions readers: last year, our own Matt Seidel reviewed fiction prize winner The Sellout, and the Football Book Club read Maggie Nelson’s winner in the criticism field, The Argonauts. Head on over to The Guardian for more details.