How does Karl Ove Knausgaard delve into some of the oldest parts of his memory for his writing? “I remember every single room that I have been in from the age of seven. What I did was to place myself in those rooms, and when I started to write about them it was like unlocking a thousand small doors, all leading further into childhood,” he told Cressida Leyshon at The New Yorker. Knausgaard also has a story, “Come Together” (behind the paywall), in the current issue. Pair with: Our essay on My Struggle.
Unlocking the Doors
Amazon’s First-Half Top 10
Amazon has named its Best Books of 2010… So Far (that’s January through June).
●
●
Imaginary Russia
David Satter’s It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway gets reviewed for The Daily Beast. The book is a “sweeping study of how the former Soviet Union’s bloody past continues to poison Russia’s present and threatens to strangle the country’s future.”
●
●
Travelogue as Memoir
“We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can’t avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.” The Rumpus interviews Russell Banks about his new book Voyager: Travel Writings.
●
●
Summer Book Sale
New York Review Books is having a Summer Sale, featuring heavily discounted works by Mavis Gallant (who we’ve reviewed and whose books appear in several of our articles), Balzac and many others. There’s even a Bird Lovers’ collection, for anyone wanting to read all about falcons and something called a goshawk.
A Poetic Comeback
Jennifer Hizaji takes a look at the recent rise in poetry's popularity in the United States, the first increase in readers since about 2002.
●
●
●
How Many Spaces After A Period?
According to Slate: “Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.”
●
●
A Presidential Conversation Continued
We highlighted the first installment of President Obama’s conversation with Marilynne Robinson, published in The New York Review of Books. Part II is now here. We have a few pieces on Robinson to pair with it.
●
●
One comment: